Xperinet CEO Predicts Imminent Death Of The DVD

Demise of HD DVD spells curtains for the DVD as well, as Hollywood studios drool at the prospect of another format change. Any DVD-only media server to be obsolete next year. [The following is a release from Xperinet]

February 29, 2008

Xperinet, Inc., the leader in media storage and IP media distribution, announced today its prognostication with respect to the future of DVD media. "The DVD will be dead in 18 months," predicted John T. Cox, President and CEO of Xperinet. "Now that the format war has been resolved, the Studios are chomping at the bit to implement another wholesale format change. This means big money for them, as consumers start replacing their DVD libraries with Blu-ray." Content creators have in the past benefited greatly from media transitions, as consumers re-purchase content they already own on the new format. This enables the industry to reap new revenue and royalties on old content, with a minimal investment for re-mastering. Other transitions, such as VHS to DVD, and LP to CD, saw huge spikes in content purchases as consumers sought to take advantage of the convenience and quality improvements of the new media. "The transition from DVD to Blu-ray represents the biggest quality improvement of any media change to date," continued Cox. "It's a difference you can really see, and once accustomed to it, anything less is unwatchable." Xperinet believes this dramatic step in picture quality will drive the 30 million households in America who own High Definition televisions to rapidly move on replacing their existing libraries of DVDs. "We anticipate Studios will begin publishing new movies on exclusively on Blu-ray as early as Christmas of this year, and will use the broadcast transition to HD as a justification for the move," continued Cox. "This will prove a boon for Blu-ray player manufacturers, as hold-out DVD customers are forced to upgrade. We expect by the fall of 2009, DVDs will rapidly disappear from retail stores, just as LPs did in 1987." The implications of such a swift transition are critical for anyone purchasing a media server this year. Numerous products on the market only support DVDs, and their video decoders cannot play Blu-ray movies. "Many competing server products cannot be upgraded to Blu-ray," warned Cox. "The servers don't have the storage capacity or throughput to handle 1080p video to multiple streams; their players can't read H.264 encoding used on many BD titles; and their video chips aren't powerful enough to decode 1080p video, which is six times the frame size, and requires ten times more processing power than DVD. Nothing short of a complete retrofit will make the transition possible." Xperinet has been shipping Blu-ray compatible systems for almost a year now, and has recently released it latest firmware update to enable loading and managing video from Blu-ray discs. Xperinet's MIRV (Multiple Independent Replay Video) system can support up to 10 simultaneous streams of 1080p video, and its latest players decode WMV-HD, MPEG-2, H.264, and DIVX formats. This powerful processing capability combines with numerous new features to make MIRV the premier video storage and distribution system, including: • Synchronization of content between locations for customers with multiple homes • Small form-factor HD player that can be mounted behind a display • RAID-6 storage protection for movies and music • Film conversion to 1080p for Blu-ray quality video from home movies Expandable storage to grow the system as one's library grows

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