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DVD Standard Sought

Leading vendors gather to hammer out a spec for reading all DVD formats.

By Peggy Watt, PCWorld   

The effort occurs under the venue of the Optical Storage Technology Association trade group. Setting a standard and devising tests to certify compliance will help calm consumers who are wary of buying technology that now has various formats, says Ray Freeman, OSTA facilitator. OSTA members hope uniformity will promote the market as a whole.

OSTA wants to produce a formal DVD Read Compatibility Specification by year end that allows broad interchange of recorded media. Ideally, the spec will support all types of CD media--including CD audio, CD-ROM, CD-R (Writable), and CD-RW (Rewritable--as well as DVD-ROM, DVD-R and the two incompatible DVD rewritable formats, DVD-RAM and DVD+RW.

"OSTA will attempt to create a spec that will allow any DVD machine to read any DVD disk, so buyers won't have to worry about which horse to bet on," Freeman says. "This confusion is slowing the transition to DVD."

If vendors follow the specification, CD and DVD optical drives could read specified writable DVD media, even from competing formats.

OSTA members became concerned with proliferation of competing DVD standards, especially as rewritable formats appeared. Market researcher Dataquest has recently revised its 2001 shipment projections of rewritable DVD drives from 17 million to 1.9 million units, largely due to the market's concerns over compatibility.

Earlier Standard Success

OSTA has a track record for leading such collaboration on a standard. The organization helped develop the MultiRead specification to ensure compatibility among CD media and CD/DVD devices. That standard was reached in July 1997, and compliant devices display a MultiRead logo indicating they pass the test devised by OSTA.

The organization's 66 members include software developers, resellers, and most of the world's leading optical storage product manufacturers. Participants represent more than 85 percent of worldwide shipments. Toshiba, one of the holdouts, recently joined and will participate in the subcommittee, Freeman says.

Felix Nemirovsky, vice president of optical storage drive manufacturer Plextor, is leading the OSTA Writable DVD Subcommittee. "A specification ensuring that consumers are protected from compatibility issues could be critical for DVD to reach its ultimate potential," Nemirovsky says.

Along with the specification, the subcommittee is charged with developing a compatibility test and test tools, Freeman says. The group also hopes to lay the groundwork for the eventual compatibility of the 4.7GB drives still in development.