Audio Video News

In a unique collaboration, Hewlett-Packard, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, and Yamaha took part in a demonstration at last week's CeBIT show in Hanover, Germany, intended to publicly reinforce their commitment to 4.7 Gigabyte DVD+RW technology. Thomson Multimedia also revealed its support of DVD+RW technology at CeBIT.

Both real-time recording and immediate playback were shown in a demonstration using a Ricoh prototype recording device with video content recorded on DVD+RW media, then played back on a variety of currently available DVD-ROM and DVD-Video devices. The group says that the first 4.7GB DVD+RW drives and media are expected to be available by the end of the year, and that DVD+RW drives can be expected to read CD-ROM, CD-RW, CD-Recordable (CD-R), and CD Audio discs, as well as DVD-Video titles.

Ricoh's Takeshi Matsui states that "we've achieved a major milestone in the development of 4.7GB DVD+RW technology. Real-time recording and playback of 4.7GB DVD+RW media bring us one step closer to the capability, compatibility, and capacity that our customers expect to see in an outcoming product. Our final target is to install the data-file and video-file recording capability." Robert van Eijk, of Philips' Optical Storage Division, adds that "our customers are looking for a logical growth path based on the success of CD-RW technology, and DVD+RW represents the best solution for both data and video recording applications from the consumer point of view."