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CD Freaks forecasts 2005 - Article
Posted by Jan Willem on 21 December 2004

The end of the year is near and 2005 is just around the corner. The year 2004 brought us a lot of improvements in DVD burning and we can certainly say that in 2004 DVD burning became a common thing to do. Increased speeds and dual layer burners are probably the most exciting things to mention about the year 2004 but will 2005 be boring? We don’t think so! In 2005 we can probably expect the DVD recording industry to become more and more mature and you, as an end user, will benefit. Here are our forecasts for 2005.

Increasing speeds

On the hardware side we’ll see that the speeds are going to increase for dual layer and rewritable media. 16 Speed for DVD-R and DVD+R are said to be the maximum so we’re not expecting that those speeds will increase. We do expect that dual layer DVD recording will reach 8 speed and it’s most likely this will be somewhere in 2005. The DVD+RW Alliance has already announced that 8 speed might not be the maximum and 12x could be reality at the end of 2005. Also rewriteable media will be faster in 2005. The first drives that support 8x on DVD+RW have already been announced and should become available in the first quarter of 2005. According to the DVD+RW Alliance speeds higher than 8x could become available at the end of 2005.

Focus shift

Another trend seems to be manufacturers are switching their focus from getting large OEM orders to selling more drives in retail. OEM orders from the likes of HP and Dell are generally good for selling a lot of drives at once but profit margins are relative low. In retail the profit margins are higher but they will require more creativity of the manufacturer. This means special features both hardware and software wise. Since increased competition in the retail channels will also put pressure on profit margins the brands will need to find a way to differentiate themselves in order to be able to ask higher prices. Creativity and good marketing will be essential.

A good example is Plextor who are still able to sell their drives at relative high prices by offering exclusive functionality and by investing in their trusted brand name. Other companies will probably follow their example and create new features that are exclusive to them. Also investments in brand names will likely be required. For consumers this means that their demands are becoming increasingly more important to the optical drive manufacturers. Companies who want to differentiate themselves will likely do this by offering software that works exclusively with their hardware. For example BenQ has already notified their distribution channel that this will be one of the strategies they will be using.

Rising star

BenQ is likely to become one of the most popular PC DVD recorder brands in 2005 and already is rising star. The company has found a way to offer good quality DVD recording at a good price and are also starting to release exclusive software with their drive. The company is in a joint venture with Royal Dutch Philips which is good for a large amount of patents related to CD and DVD recording.

Due to the increased retail competition other brands will find it difficult to survive, certainly those who are not in a joint venture with a Taiwanese or South Korean company. It would not be surprising if more companies follow Yamaha and Ricoh in leaving the optical drive market.

Emerging technologies

An interesting technology that should become available in 2005 will be HP’s Lightscribe which allows users to write labels on the labeling/non-recordable surface of a recordable disc. This technology should become available in 2005 and is supported by large media manufacturers such as Verbatim, CMC, Imation, Memorex and TDK. On the hardware side the amount of companies with a license is relative small but amongst them are large manufacturers such as LG, Toshiba, Philips and Lite-On. Possibly Toshiba and Philips will make the technology also available to their joint venture partners Samsung and BenQ. Also all major software companies support this technology so it will be the question whether consumers will find this an usefull technology and of course what will be additional costs for Lightscribe discs and hardware.

Besides the focus on DVD recording hardware it will also be essential for DVD recording hardware manufacturers to focus on new technologies. Japanese giants such as Sony, Pioneer and NEC have already announced they will shift their Research and Development from DVD recording to recording technologies utilizing blue lasers such as Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

HD-DVD and Blu-ray players and drives will become more widely available in 2005. However it will be the early adopters that will start using the technology and as long as HD-TV and other technologies that require more storage space are not mainstream. The demand for Blu-ray and HD-DVD will probably be limited to hardcore users at first. As soon as movie companies are releasing their content on these discs the players will need to become available and recorders will follow soon. It will be interesting to see the battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray much of it is already going on with press releases that should convince everyone that the support for their format is increasing and that they have essential supporters on their side.

However nothing is decided yet and it is very likely that this format war will dominate the news on our site in 2005.

Increased software competition

Another interesting development will be on the software side. Sonic solution has recently acquired Roxio. Roxio is a pretty strong brand name when it comes to recording software and for a while it was mainly Roxio and Ahead (Nero) who where seriously competing. Nero is mainly bundled in Europe while Roxio secured many OEM deals in the United States. Sonic is also rapidly becoming more and more popular and has some strong products like Record Now and thanks to Roxio Easy CD/DVD media. Hardware manufacturers seem to be asking for a lot of functionality of the software that they bundle with their drives and both Sonic and Nero now have a wide range of multimedia applications that they can deliver with drives. However it’s a public secret that there are small profit margins on bundling software with drives so also these companies will need to boost profits in the retail channels. This will likely result in even more functionality in their packages.

Another software company that is rapidly growing is Intervideo. This company started with mainly DVD playing software but has rapidly expanded their product range with burning applications. It will be interesting to see whether this company will continue alone, acquires other companies or gets acquired. Also Cyberlink located in Taiwan, near the large hardware manufacturers, is rapidly growing. Their focus on home entertaiment and their product range might also fit nicely in the portfolio of another company.

It will also be interesting to see how companies that are making most of their profits from transcoding DVD-9 to DVD-5 will survive. This year they will probably easily survive but dual layer discs and hardware will become cheaper, better and more widely available. Will people still use their software or will dual layer become so cheap and reliable that people will stop to transcode?

Media improvements

Speaking about dual layer, as said this technology will become wider available and companies will make many efforts to make it more compatible, faster and above all cheaper. DVD-R dual layer will have to keep up with the speed increases of the DVD+R camp. The media will need to become much cheaper and as soon as the large manufacturers such as CMC, Ritek and Prodisc will be able to produce these discs in huge quantities the expectations are that the price of dual layer media will be slightly higher then single layer media in 2005.

Media overall will become cheaper and compatibility will be one of the main focus of hardware manufacturers. At the moment they have to keep up with speed increases but now we’ve reached the final 16 speed they can start to focus their R&D to make as much discs compatible with their drives. Also CD recording started with compatibility issues of which we see almost none at this time.

An exciting year coming up, we’ll be with you

All in all 2005 will be an exciting year with blue laser technology as the most important development to keep an eye on. But it will also be the year that DVD recording becomes faster, more reliable and cheaper. Expect the companies to fight for your demands as never before and expect us to keep you updated on it all like we do for almost 8 years now!

Source: cdfreaks.com