DVD Union Addresses Known DVD Authoring/Playback Problems
The European DVD Union recently held its first Technical Issues Sub-Group meeting in Paris to address the issue of DVD quality. On the issue of quality, the first measurement of quality was whether the discs worked or not. This is the most important issue facing DVD technologies. Navigational problems were addressed and a proposal for standardization was raised regarding a core control set that would help the end-user to further recognize player and disc operations. An another, more complex, issue that was addressed is the erratic reaction of some players to commands authored into the disc. It was acknowledged that discs play with varying success on different DVD players. But it is uncertain how much of this is caused by inaccurate authoring, standards that are open to interpretation or variations in the DVD playerís navigation firmware. One of the proposals of the technical sub-committee is to create a website on known authoring/playback problems, so companies can be warned of problems. Another is to produce an ""authoring test disc"" that would include examples of complying material that caused problems with some DVD players. This would help isolate where the playback problems actually reside. A formal report of the European DVD Union on these matters is expected soon.