Doubts Cast On Dvd If Consumers Have To Pay
The Age
Monday July 28, 1997
WILL DVD take a dive? It could depend on the willingness of consumers to pay for something they're used to getting for nothing, according to a DVD (digital versatile disc) market expert coming to Melbourne.
Local multimedia developers will get a crash course in the new DVD technology at a seminar to be run by the eMERGE industry development body next week.
Drew Ianni, business development manager for Hollywood's CKS pictures, will be a speaker at the session.
Ianni said he was "cautiously optimistic" about the future of DVD as an entertainment medium, pointing out that it had to compete with an unprecendented range of other home-entertainment options.
Movie makers were understandably unwilling to give away their valuable content - "they're just printing money in their video groups" - he said. That left the new medium battling public expectations they would get "free" software (movies) bundled with players, built up by the freebies given with new PCs.
Ianni said the worldwide multimedia publishing industry technically operated at a net loss because of the practice. He said DVD-ROM was at risk of also succumbing to the "value transfer fiasco", where consumers paid for hardware instead of software.
But DVD-ROM was still some way off, and the main focus was on the entertainment market, he said. "If DVD wants to be a mass market technology, it's going to have to do it through home entertainment."
The intrinsic superiority of the sound and picture quality on DVD movies was not enough, he said.
Video players had the advantage in being able to record content, and many people were happy with that. And while home entertainment buffs were buying DVD players, the mass market was where the money was.
For DVD releases to succeed, movie owners would have to create additional content, like background on the making of movies and soundtrack albums built into the DVD disc.
"They're not doing it now, but they are thinking about it. It's just a matter of time," Ianni said.
He said he believed Hollywood would continue to insist on DVD releases being coded by region to stop them being pirated.
The session next Monday will also include experts in animation and visual effects, technical talks and demonstrations of local products.
© 1997 The Age
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