This article was the first serious public look at the technical aspects of and market potential for CD-ReWritable (CD-RW). Known during its development as CD-Erasable (CD-E), CD-RW is an interesting chapter in the history of optical storage and, fanciful expectations of its promoters aside, continues to endure, long outliving most of its contemporaries.
This article was the first serious public look at the technical aspects of and market potential for DVD-Recordable (DVD-R). Some thirteen years later, it’s gratifying to see that DVD-R became, and indeed still remains, a beloved and universal means for enjoying, distributing, storing and archiving just about everything digital.
It takes more than just imagination and hard work to put together a Blu-ray video disc. Outside of the usual authoring mechanics, content owners and publishers must not only make physical production decisions but also contend with numerous legal and financial obligations to the technology, patent, trademark, and other intellectual property holders.
Whether we acknowledge, like, or even understand them, we all have obligations. Traditionally, legal responsibilities for videographers, photographers, filmmakers, and service bureaus fall along the lines of managing copyright interests as well as privacy and publicity rights. Distributing digital audio, video, text, and still images, either electronically or on physical media, often involves equally important …
Isn’t it amazing that for all of the careful design they put into CD and DVD technology, the engineers never stopped to consider how discs might be labeled on the desktop? Thankfully, the marketplace has come to the rescue with its own solutions—some good, some not so good, but all ingenious in their own regard.
As the first generation of DVD-ROM drives ushered in a brand-new day in high-density optical media storage, the same drives seemed to spell doom for die-hard CD-R users, who harbored a well-founded fear that they might have to abandon their investments in CD-R hardware and media and migrate to the new technology.
There is little arguing that CD-R disc label printing has come a long way in terms of price and capability in a few years and the future promises more exciting developments.
Speed of technological change seems inevitable. Sometimes speed gets you where you want to go faster, but sometimes speed kills. Speed in product development and rush to market rather than well considered long-term planning has come on the scene to infect well-ordered CD marketing.
Sensing a strategic market opportunity, Sony Corporation has now announced that it will be introducing two separate optical pickups capable of reading DVD, CD-ROM, and CD-R discs.
The new $3899 PS-200XL from direct-marketing powerhouse Gateway 2000 of North Sioux City, South Dakota is a state-of-the-art 200MHz Pentium system and the first PC from a major vendor to incorporate a CD recorder.
Light finally shines at the end of the tunnel for CD-Erasable (CD-E) with formal market delivery anticipated at the November COMDEX exhibition in Las Vegas.