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Sci Tech
The CD is dead; long live the DVD!
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CD-ROM is giving way to the DVD — ushering in an era of high-density data storage. Consumers have to prepare for a showdown with content providers, over ownership and copyright issues.
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THE SUMMER of 2002, will see two entertainment giants, Philips and Sony, lose millions of dollars as crucial patents expire. In 1978, a patent was issued to them for the Compact Disk Read Only Memory or CD-ROM _ the aluminium platter on which nearly 700 megabytes (MB) of digital data could be optically etched and read by a tiny laser. It was a quantum jump in storage: from the floppy disk which could at most hold 1.44 MB and the less ubiquitous Zip disk which could hold about 100 MB.
On every CD _ audio, video or data _ that has been sold since then, the two companies have shared 3 percent of the selling price, in the ratio of 60:40 with the larger share going to Philips. Philips alone was said to be raking in $ 85 million every year as its share of the licence fee.
When such patent rights expire, we may see the market is usually flooded with hundreds of new makes, which send the price of the product crashing. But CD prices will not see any dramatic fall in price taking it below the price of a floppy disk, is quite simple: it is virtually obsolete. It is time to say goodbye to the CD, and hello to its ( literally) more versatile successor, the DVD, earlier an acronym for Digital Versatile Disk. The CD can hold at most 72-75 minutes of video content _ and one needed two or three CDs to hold a full length feature film.The DVD is the same size as the CD, but it packs in more information in two ways:
-By making the tracks narrower and the pits shallower, it crams in more data, increasing the CD capacity over 6-fold, to 4.7 gigabytes (GB), where one GB is equal to 1000 MB.
-To add even more data, some DVDs add a second layer beneath the first. This effectively doubles the capacity of the DVD to something like 8.5 GB. While the single layer 4.7 B DVD can hold between 120 and 133 minutes of video, the double layer DVD can accommodate 4 hours.
DVDs, which will soon be offered in double-sided versions.
A double-sided single layer DVD will hold 9.4 GB of data while a double-sided double-layered version can hold a whopping 17 GB. These products with double sides or double layers, have been realised, but are not yet commercially available. And the reason for this has to do with standards. As in the case of videocassettes, where the industry was divided between the VHS and the Betacam standard (to the detriment of the consumer), DVDs are currently undergoing a shakeout, with the industry unable to agree on a single global standard.
Unlike recorded CDs, today's DVDs do not play on all DVD drives: that is, PC based DVD drives as well as direct-to-TV DVD players. It seems the entertainment industry has learnt nothing from history and is intent on replaying all over again, the tired scenario of 30 years ago when audio and video cassettes first came in vogue.
At that time, many music companies tried to stop the marketing of audiocassette recorders on the grounds that the customer would be able to make copies of copyrighted music cassettes. This premise was demolished in landmark court decisions in the US which held that while the bulk copying of music cassettes for commercial purposes may be piracy, an individual customer had the right to make additional copies of any cassette for personal use or convenience. The time may have come for customers worldwide to join in taking on the recorded entertainment industry once more. Consider the following developments:
Major music recording companies: BMG, Universal, Sony, EMI and Warner's, are all set to release their new music CDs in a format that allows them to be played on audio CD players but NOT on CD drives of PCs.
The trick is to introduce minute ``errors'' into the CDs in the form of changes in the location of data. Audio CD players will tolerate these errors _ but not the more critical computer CD drives. Why are music companies afraid to have PCs play their CDs and DVDs? Because most new PCs these days come with CD-RW , that is CD-Read- Write drives that not only play CDs but ``burn'' data on blank CDs.
Indeed, entertainment distributors and electronics companies are working overtime as partners in a ``Copy Protection Working Group'' which aims to create a technology that would scramble a music or movie DVD and make it impossible to copy. Meanwhile, Hitachi, NEC, Philips, Pioneer and Sony are among the hardware manufacturers who have formed Video Watermarking Group (VWM) hoping to create digital content protection technology.
In a much publicised recent case, the so called ``DVD Hacker'', Eric Corley, was barred by an American court from posting on the Internet, a software that could crack one such copy protection scheme.
There is a legal angle here, that hardly any one is aware of: on all blank audiocassette, CD or DVD that is sold, a small royalty also flows back to record companies. So, if one is paying the record companies when buying a blank CD, how can they put in technology that would prevent from making a digital copy of your music or movie cassette?
This is what some US legislators, led by Representative Rick Boucher from Virginia are asking. That is also the argument put f by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) an organisation fighting for consumer rights in a digital environment.
Only a few weeks ago, in India, Philips introduced the DVDR1000 the ``world's first DVD recorder''. It cost Rs 1.5 lakhs. But even were one to pay this stiff price, would there be a situation when one could not use it for recording because of some future technology thought up by the music-film industry combine? Will you have to buy a second player for your music CDs even though your PC has a CD drive. Will you find that one day soon, it is illegal or impossible to convert your old VHS movie cassettes into more durable DVDs?
All these technological blimps will percolate down to India. Sometimes there is advantage in slight delay: our own Cyber Laws are still being framed. A new ICE _Information, Communication and Entertainment Bill is still awaiting Parliament's nod.
Before our elected representatives, give it their uncritical approval, on a dull and sleepy afternoon, they need to ask, whether it addresses the ultimate interests of the consumer in India, or merely reproduces the errors of judgment in similar legislation.. There, they were enacted under pressure from industries that felt threatened, without examining if some of these technological restraints abridged basic rights of a consumer.
Forewarned, and forearmed, Indian user of frontline digital entertainment technology deserves to get a more equitable deal than those in the less alert, pioneer nations.
Anand Parthasarathy
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