Hitachi Boosts Rewritable DVD To 4.7GB

Digital Versatile Discs will soon be even more versatile, with a little help from Hitachi America. The company is unveiling a new recordable DVD drive that nearly doubles the capacity of first-generation DVD-RAMs. Hitachi America will demonstrate the 4.7GB GF-2000 at next week's Comdex computer trade show in Las Vegas, and it expects to ship samples to hardware manufacturers in January. Until first-generation 2.8GB DVD-RAM drives arrived last spring, the DVD format was read-only, used mostly to play prerecorded movies on home DVD players and high-end PC drives. The new 4.7GB DVD-RAMs match the higher capacity of the DVD-ROM standard, opening new options for recording and playback, according to Robert Katzive, Vice President of the market research firm DISK/TREND. Hitachi says the 4.7GB-per-side recordable technology will enable new types of devices, such as home DVD video recorders and video cameras. It will also support more integration between consumer video and PC applications. The GF-2000 is backward compatible with both single- and double-sided DVD drives, and can read the major DVD and CD formats, such as DVD-ROM, CD-ROM, and CD-Audio, according to Hitachi. Pricing hasn't been determined, but the drive will probably be in a price range similar to its predecessor, which cost between $799 and $899, says a Hitachi spokesperson. Standards Battle The DVD-RAM standard is backed by heavyweights such as Toshiba and Panasonic. But opposition exists from an equally impressive group, headed by Sony, Hewlett-Packard, and Philips. They support a competing and incompatible standard, DVD+RW (pronounced ""DVD plus RW""), the first generation of which narrowly bested DVD-RAM's capacity, with 3GB. With its archrival soon leapfrogging to 4.7GB, the DVD+RW camp is preparing its own move to the higher capacity while struggling to ship its first 3GB products. HP, for example, revealed on November 4 that it may not ship a 3GB drive promised for this fall so it can shift its efforts to 4.7GB. Panasonic has publicly demonstrated a 4.7GB DVD-RAM like Hitachi's and reportedly plans to ship samples by year's end. One bone of contention is the cartridges that DVD-RAM discs require for recording. Though the discs can be removed for playback in regular DVD-ROM drives, the DVD+RW group says the requirement is user-unfriendly. The discs' versatility will be the focus of a Comdex demonstration, according to a Hitachi spokesperson. Staff will record from a video camera onto DVD-RAM, then remove the discs from the cartridge and play them on latest-generation Hitachi DVD-ROM drives that are designed to handle DVD-RAM discs. Panasonic and others are also introducing new DVD-RAM-compatible DVD-ROM devices, the spokesperson says. The disagreements are slowing adoption of recordable DVD and creating a void quickly being filled by 650MB recordable CD formats like CD-RW, according to several analysts. Even the higher-capacity DVD-RAMs might face slow acceptance in the marketplace. ""Right now, we've got relatively few users who need 4.7GB,"" says DISK/TREND's Katzive. Source: PC World