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Broadband is still a long way off. Some say it could be 10 to 15 years before much of the U.S. is wired up with DSL or fiber optics. By the end of 2001, there may be no more than 5 million to 7 million broadband-user homes. That's about 5% of the total homes in the U.S. Half of the users will have DSL modems, which need about 24 hours to download a movie. The other half will have cable modems that might be a bit faster—that is, if no one else in the neighborhood also is downloading a movie on the shared network.
"That's why streaming video on demand is only for those who aren't very demanding," says Jim Taylor, author of DVD Demystified, Second Edition and chief of DVD technology at Sonic Solutions, Novato, Calif. "Maybe adequate bandwidth will arrive somewhere between 2005 and 2010," he adds.
But there's a remarkable innovation that can bring the Web and the DVD closer together. Called Web-connected DVD, it circumvents some crucial bottlenecks resulting from limited bandwidth, thereby bringing a bundle of benefits to both the DVD and the Web.
Web-connected DVD builds on the phenomenally rapid evolution of DVD. In its early days, DVD stood for "digital video disk." Some say the acronym today stands for "digital versatile disk," while others, somewhat sardonically, claim that it no longer stands for anything. All of this aside, everyone agrees that DVD is a powerful, multifunctional, removable storage device with a host of untapped potential.
Our requirements for storage are virtually insatiable. For example, within Intel Corp., some 500,000 e-mails are transmitted each day. That's an average of 10 e-mails per person, or 1.6 Gbytes of information. A single DVD, then, can store five days of Intel's e-mail. Moreover, DVD-storage costs are 0.005 cents/Mbyte, compared to 2.3 cents/
Mbyte for a hard drive.
Put another way, a single-sided DVD can handle high-quality digital video in MPEG-2 format, like a two-hour movie. If double-sided, it can hold approximately eight hours of very high-quality video, or 30 hours if it's VHS quality.
To measure success to date, look at public acceptance. The DVD is the all-time winner in the consumer marketplace. By its third birthday, 6 million players were sold in the U.S. Over 10 million players and 30 million DVD-ROM computers were sold worldwide as well.
The DVD will celebrate its fifth birthday this year. Unlike CD standards that evolved over a quarter of a century, DVD standards have emerged relatively quickly, building upon CD technology. Beginning as a read-only data delivery format, it has blossomed into both recordable and rewritable versions. Each evolving version has tried to maintain some semblance of compatibility with its kin.
Two events played major roles in structuring the DVD. In 1994, the motion picture industry formed the Hollywood Digital Video Disc Advisory Group. It's objective was to define a disk media that would provide higher quality and higher reliability than tape. Then in 1995, the Computer Industry Alliance was formed. The members took it upon themselves to ensure that the next-generation disk technology would meet their customers' needs.
Much Faster, Too
Depending on its genre, a DVD holds anywhere from seven to 25 times as much data as a CD. The microscopic pits on a DVD used to store information are more tightly packed than those in a CD (see "DVD TechnologyA Synopsis," below). The DVD is nine times faster, too. It has a 12-cm diameter, as does the CD. This means that both the disks and the disk drives can be manufactured on existing CD production lines with only slight changes.
A DVD serves two separate and distinct domains—computer data storage and audio/video storage. A DVD-ROM drive reads computer data from a DVD-ROM disk. But a DVD player, like its ancestors the VCR and CD player, plays back video and audio from a DVD. Taylor points out, however, that as computers become true multimedia systems, and set-top box designers include more computer features, the distinction will gradually disappear.
The DVD is beginning to supplant the CD and VHS tapes in the entertainment world. This transformation will probably extend over several decades. Also, the DVD is a random-access technology. No fast forwarding or rewinding is necessary, as is the case with VHS tapes, making it possible to immediately jump to any spot in the medium.
On the computer side of things, DVD-ROM drives and recordable DVD drives are beginning to supplant CD technology as well. Because PCs are so equipped, they will play a larger role in entertainment. There will be those who want to watch movies on a PC. Perhaps they're college students in the dorm, or airline passengers with laptops, or simply those who want to view better video than TVs presently provide.
Web-connected DVD combines the best of a DVD with the best of the Internet. Combining DVD with the dynamics of a Web connection introduces a freshness and interaction that never existed before. This includes a large library of options that can extend the life of a DVD, with Web-based up-grades such as supplements, news, and special offers.