History 2001: DVD-RW Drives Finally Here

The DVD+RW Alliance chose the IFA 2001 in Berlin, Germany, an expo dedicated to consumer elecctronics products, to launch its first rewritable optical drives, which were a decidedly long time in coming, well after DVD-RAM and DVD-RW devices.

This does not mean that the 4.7GB DVD+RW are doomed from the outset, of course, but its always better to be ahead rather than behind.

Certain OEMs, furthermore, did not wait before making their choice among the other camps.

Here are the major announcements:

• It is significant that Philips, the ringleader, selected the IFA rather than a purely computer-oriented show. Its first writer, the DVDR1000 (€2,200), is essentially a home video recorder for storing movies on optical disks. Its equivalent for PCs, the DVDRW208, will not ship for another month. Software included: Easy CD Creator from Roxio and MyDVD from Sonic Solutions.
• Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, is only interested in computer applications, and has launched its own DVD-Writer dvd100i ($599 for the drive, $16 per DVD+RW disk) expected at the same time as the Philips’ PC-based device, for good reason: Philips makes the device. HP will offer it to the after-market (Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA), or integrated into some of its computers with Veritas’ Recordnow and MyDVD software.
• Ricoh plans to ship, before the end of the month, its own PC DVD+RW drive, the MP5120A (2.4x in DVD write mode, 10x for CD-RW, 12x for CD-R, 32x for CD-ROM, in other words, more or less the same specs found on the HP and Philips models) also bundled with MyDVD and 4.7GB media.
• Verbatim is already set with disks, and is waiting only for the effective availability of the drives. Note that none of these devices offers DVD WORM DVD+R,

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 164 on September 2001 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.