STAYING AHEAD Nero’s Man Shows His Cards - Page 3

CDRINFO: Besides hardware, what other factors play a key role in the quality of DVD recording?

J. Corbett: Media is probably the single biggest one after hardware, and there have been plenty of stories about format and hardware incompatibilities. On the software side we have implemented a rigid check procedure to ensure the quality of a Nero written DVD will work where the hardware and media allows it to. But with competing formats, and differing media standards, we believe there is still a lot of education needed before the consumer really understands why sometimes things will not work the way he or she expects them to.

CDRINFO: Hardware manufacturers have already announced the market roadmap for DVD, saying that the 16x recording speed is the top limit, and the recording speed race is in full progress. Philips and Pioneer have announced dual layer recording. On the other hand, users are complaining about the incompatibility of current recorded DVDs (single layer). It appears that DVD recording has not followed in the footsteps of CD-R regarding quality consistency. With this in mind, is dual layer recording feasible while even overburing on single layer DVDs has not yet been achieved?

J. Corbett: Our initial testing with double layer DVD recording has proved very successful, both from a writing and playback point of view. We believe double layer will prove hugely successful, and whilst it’s very true to say DVD has not been able all the time to follow CD in terms of quality consistency, there have been several mitigating circumstances. What’s undeniable though is that DVD is the fastest growing consumer format of all time, and we’ll continue to see unprecedented growth for years to come.

CDRINFO: Both AOD (Toshiba-NEC) and Blu-Ray technologies seem to be addressed to professionals due to their high price for the mid-user. Do you believe that they will be more affordable in the near future and how will Ahead support these technologies?

J. Corbett: We’re already co-operating with the AOD and Blu-Ray groups, but there are a number of factors that could determine which one will eventually win through. Cost is a big factor in mass market adoption, and it’s conceivable that both formats will find a niche for some time in the professional or pro-sumer market, with double layer drives becoming the main consumer format. Newer codec technologies such as AVC/H264 could also have a deciding factor in determining the success.

CDRINFO: What do you believe will be the next generation(s) of mass storage recording media to hit the market and how far away are we from this?

J. Corbett: Well speaking for the consumer market, I think long term it will still be DVD based. Probably when CD first came about in 1982, you wouldn’t have given much hope for this being around in the next century. But that is exactly what has happened, and even in 2004, the sales of CD products will be extremely high. But with double layer on the horizon and AOD and Blu-Ray to come, we’ll be well served for some time yet in DVD mass storage.

CDRINFO: So what new products or technologies can be expected from Ahead this CeBIT?

J. Corbett: 2004 excites us a lot because we have so many interesting developments taking place. For CeBIT you can expect some pretty major enhancements to our existing applications, including the likes of Recode, and NeroVision Express. We’ll be featuring DVD+R DL (double layer) demonstrations with our partners, and in the case of Nero Digital, we intend to implement key technologies such as Parametric Stereo, giving for the first time, terrific quality at bit rates as low as 24kbps, and realising 5.1 audio at 64kbps. We believe this will raise the stakes in low bite rate, minimal quality loss encoding, but the video side also excites us. We intend to preview AVC/H264 for the first time, which takes MPEG-4 onto the next level. Recode will also support multiple file import, (not just DVD folders), so the transparent transcoding into Nero Digital format will become even easier for existing content that exists out there. But there will be a whole lot more, which is why we’ll be promoting in so many different areas during the show. So we’re looking forward to welcoming as many of our customers as possible.