Blane
1
ALREADY BIG IN JAPAN, DVD machines that record television are going to get a bit faster thanks to a deal between Pioneer and TDK. Pioneer has already captured 40% of the market for domestic DVD recorders.
The recorders feature a built in hard drive to store television programs, much like the Tivo. The major difference is that you can then save a program using the built-in rewriteable DVD drive. The current Pioneer machine uses a double speed drive.
There is a big format war going on in Japan and much of the rest of the world at the moment. Two competing DVD standards, +R/RW and -R/RW, are desperately trying to gain dominant market share. The bitter experience of Betamax has left Sony at least with some sense. It has started making PC drives that are capable of reading and writing both formats. It remains to be seen whether these drives make it into domestic DVD recorders but it can only be bad for consumers if they don't.
The winners of the format war are likely to be the consumers. The future is bound to hold faster drives at very competitive prices as the two formats slug it out. The Sony drive points to the way of things to come. If both standards groups want license fees, license both, that way consumers don't get caught in between the fighting giants.
The recorders feature a built in hard drive to store television programs, much like the Tivo. The major difference is that you can then save a program using the built-in rewriteable DVD drive. The current Pioneer machine uses a double speed drive.
There is a big format war going on in Japan and much of the rest of the world at the moment. Two competing DVD standards, +R/RW and -R/RW, are desperately trying to gain dominant market share. The bitter experience of Betamax has left Sony at least with some sense. It has started making PC drives that are capable of reading and writing both formats. It remains to be seen whether these drives make it into domestic DVD recorders but it can only be bad for consumers if they don't.
The winners of the format war are likely to be the consumers. The future is bound to hold faster drives at very competitive prices as the two formats slug it out. The Sony drive points to the way of things to come. If both standards groups want license fees, license both, that way consumers don't get caught in between the fighting giants.