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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1544
300 Million and Counting: Recordable DVDs Set to Crush CDRs
By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac
January 17th 2003
CDRW not dead yet by a long shot, but DVD recordable production set to increase
dramatically.
CDR sales are flat - so disc manufacturers are turning production capacity over to
DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW, according to a PIDA (Photonics Industry and Technology
Development Association) report at CDR Info.
300 million recordable DVDs will ship in 2003, more than double the 120 million in
2002, PIDA says.
While a mind-boggling 5.83 billion CDRs are still slated to ship for 2003,
manufacturers are turning to recordable DVD for revenues, as flat prices and an
oversupply of CDRs have made CDs a high-volume but low-margin proposition.
Analysis: It's been rumored lately that Apple will dump CDRW drives altogether across
the model range this year, and opt for DVD-R/RW drives, as their prices continue to
fall. The shipping of the previous (November 2002) PowerBooks with a DVD system disc
was telling, as you can't make a backup of it without a DVD-R drive, if you happen to
own a mere Combo PowerBook.
CDs will be around for a long, long time of course [heck, I still have all my vinyl
and a turntable to play them one]. But 52, maybe 56x is the limit of the technology,
realisticially, and it confronts the law of diminishing speed returns, as well as the
confines of space. Larger-capacity types of recordable CD are available or under
development, but DVD is a far more attractive proposition. It can do 4.7 or 9.4GB here
and now and the drives are cheap and getting faster. Regardless whether it's -R or +R,
it plays on DVD video players and computer DVD ROM players are cheap too. And, of
course, DVD recorders all support CDRW.
If Apple can pull this off, it would be quite a coup for them to come out and state
their entire range sports a DVD-R.
But then, the iBook would have to have a G4 to use iDVD, wouldn't it? Hm...
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