NEC AND TOSHIBA ASSERT SUPERIORITY OF THEIR ‘HD-DVD’ PROPOSAL

The gloves came off, too, at the briefing, where the partners asserted HD-DVD’s technical and commercial superiority in key areas compared with the rival Blu-ray HD format. To demonstrate HD-DVD’s ability to exploit industry investment in the existing DVD infrastructure, the partners played movie and video clips on HD-DVDs mass produced with existing manufacturing processes, accompanied by presentations from supporting replicators. The demonstration was performed on a 2nd-generation Toshiba HD-DVD deck. Although the favored compression system for HD-DVD is the MPEG-4-based H.264 Advanced Video codec, Toshiba was careful to point out that the movie portions demonstrated were at a data transfer rate of 20 Mbps, equivalent to broadcast HDTV, but at a variable bit rate vs. the constant bit rate used for broadcast transmissions. As a ground rule of the demonstration, reporters were asked not to reveal the movie being used for the demonstration or the studio supplying it if they recognized them. Toshiba said this was under terms of a contract they had with the studio that provided the demo material.

If approved as a standard by the DVD Forum, 2005 would see the launch of HD-DVD players, recorders, prerecorded software and blank media, NEC and Toshiba executives told reporters. Given a U.S. installed base of 12 million DTV displays capable of reproducing HD images, the price of a HD-DVD player would be under $1,000 at launch and $2,000 for the first recorders, Toshiba Technology Fellow Hisashi Yamada said. Hardware prices would quickly follow the usual CE downward curve, as would prerecorded and blank HD-DVDs. Those likely will cost 15% more to make at launch than today’s DVDs, owing the longer manufacturing time (7 sec. vs. 3.5 sec. for DVD) and yields 10% lower than DVD today. Executives for replicators Cinram and Memory-Tech said manufacturing costs would drop to DVD levels within 3-4 years. Dominick DallaVerde, Cinram senior dir.- preproduction, said his company had produced nearly 250,000 HD- DVDs since May, and manufacturing time had dropped to 7 from 12 sec.

HD-DVD’s proponents again touted the advantages of maintaining DVD’s structure of 2 bonded discs with data layers 0.6 mm below the surface, not only for reasons of manufacturing cost-efficiencies but also because it enables the use of simpler, less expensive and, they claimed, more reliable read/write optics in the hardware. Blu-ray discs, in comparison, have the same 1.2 mm nominal thickness, but the data substrate is only 0.1 mm below the reading surface. That not only would require new disc manufacturing systems, but sophisticated shock-absorption in the hardware because the read/write head is closer to the data surface, and the laser beam-spot much tighter at that depth, the partners said.

Given Blu-ray’s tighter tolerances, debris or fingerprints on the surface could impair performance, requiring a cartridge or caddy to protect the disc, the HD-DVD executives said. According to the most recent statement from the Blu-ray Founders, prerecorded discs won’t need a caddy, and the group hopes to develop blank media that won’t need protection either. The HD- DVD backers said another advantage to their format was its use of a single optical head, whose laser could vary focus and wavelengths as needed to read CDs, DVDs and HD-DVDs. Blu-ray’s structure would make it “difficult” to develop a fully-compatible optical head with a single lens for CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray HD, NEC and Toshiba said. Ryoichi (Rick) Hayatsu, NEC chief mgr.-storage products, said that in fairness, HD-DVD’s larger beam-spot and greater distance (0.6 mm) to the data layer had a disadvantage compared with Blu-ray: The latter can have capacities of 23-, 25- and 27 GB for rewritable media compared with 20 GB for HD- DVD. In their presentations, NEC and Toshiba executives didn’t refer to Blu-ray by name, but as “0.1 mm technology.” Comment and reaction from Blu-ray proponents wasn’t available at our deadline.

Among other HD-DVD details revealed Mon., the executives said read-only prerecorded discs would come in single- and dual- layer configurations with 15- and 30 GB capacity respectively. Those satisfy the movie studios’ requirements for 2- and 4-plus hours playing time for HD video with multichannel audio -- and with the dual layer disc being able to accommodate various bonus features and extras. Using the MPEG-4-based H.264 Advanced Video Codec, the data rate for video would be 7-12 Mbps, and 2-5 Mbps for audio -- a rate that would make higher-resolution audio possible, such a 96-kHz/24-bit multichannel. Among other Hollywood stipulations, HD-DVD will have copy protection in the form of the 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard, “robust” key- revocation and “other antipiracy measures.” Preliminary work is underway for a dual-layer rewritable HD-DVD with 35-40 GB capacity, and a spec for write-once blanks should be ready in 6 months, Yamada said. As for HD-DVD writing speeds, the basic 35 Mbps already is the equivalent to 3x for DVD, Yamada said. The likely migration path would be to double then quadruple that, when a higher-powered laser developed by Toshiba becomes commercially available. Additionally, compared with DVD, “finalization” of a recorded HD-DVD for playback in other HD-DVD home or PC hardware isn’t required, as playback compatibility was built into the specs.

Two topics that remain up in the air include what compression flavor HD-DVD would use -- and what chance the proposal has for acceptance as a standard by the DVD Forum. The MPEG Licensing Authority has yet to specify royalty fees for licensing the H.264 codec. Yamada said the HD-DVD group was “carefully watching” the license deliberations, and that no final decision had been made for HD-DVD compression. Options include “simple MPEG-4” or even Microsoft’s HD Windows Media 9, he said. As for DVD Forum accreditation for the HD-DVD, an earlier proposal failed to get the necessary majority vote in the Steering Committee earlier this year, with only 6 of 17 members voting in favor vs. 3 nays and 8 abstentions (CED June 13 p1). Yamada said the proposal will be presented again, and HD-DVD’s backers (which include Warner Bros.) were confident of approval. Some 2-year memberships on the Steering Committee are up for rotation early next year. Yamada said that with the churn, he believed the Steering Committee “will be more receptive to HD- DVD.”