History (1997): Chaos Continues on DVD-RAM

Sony, Philips and Hewlett-Packard won’t touch it. Ricoh and NEC are working on different products. Furthermore, Sony last month announced the development of an 8 or 12GB erasable DVD, depending on whether it’s equipped with a red 635 nanometer or a blue-green 515 nanometer laser with phase-change media and land groove recording method.

But the same firm has also established basic technology for recording 10GB of data on a single disk side, only with M-O recording technology.

Pioneer is now offering an erasable DVD with 3.95GB per side, which amounts to the same capacity of its own DVD-R. The Japanese firm has also designed the prototype for an erasable drive with 15GB per side, using a 340 nanometer laser wavelength.

Eastman Kodak, JVC, Maxell, Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Philips are all working on DVD-R as well, which should soon jump from 3.95 to 4.7GB per side.

To keep the flies away, Canon has developed, according to the Japanese press, a 12cm M-O media with capacity of 22GB. Production is anticipated for the year 2000.

In USA, Panasonic Computer Peripheral Company, a member of the Matsushita group, said that it will be the first company to deliver DVD-RAM drives and media (Hitachi, which had seemed to be in the lead, has since put the brakes on its product). Matsushita’s drive conforms with the DVD Forum standard, with 2.6GB per side. The LF-D101, with SCSI interface, will be available in January 1998 for $799, a single-sided disk retailing at $25 and a double-sided disk at $40. By switching between 650 and 780 nanometer lasers and two objective lenses, this DVD-RAM drive will write proprietary PD phase change disks, and will read DVD-ROM, DVD Video, DVD-R, CD audio, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW and video CD. Furthermore, Panasonic said that all its new DVD-ROM units will have DVD-RAM read capability.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 118 on November 1997 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.