Technology Titans Battle Over Format Of DVD Successor
It's been only a few years since DVD players started taking over from VCRs in the living room. But a new battle is already raging over the DVD's high-definition successor. The prize: enormous strategic influence over the consumer-electronics market. The players: practically everyone in the technology world, from personal-computer titans that want to reach into consumer electronics to upstart Asian companies that want to lure manufacturing away from Japan.
The fight could get as messy as the VHS vs. Betamax battle over videotape formats in the 1970s and 1980s, leaving people so confused they end up buying nothing.
By Phred Dvorak in Tokyo, Nick Wingfield in San Francisco and Sarah McBride in Los Angeles
"We thought everyone would agree this time," says Kiyoshi Nishitani, a former Betamax engineer at Sony Corp. who is a key player in the new battle. "We never thought it would become such a big deal."
On Sony's side is Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic products, as well as PC maker Dell Inc. and many others. The opposing camp is led by Toshiba Corp. and plans to make room for video software from Microsoft Corp.
Unlike the old days of the stand-alone VCR, DVD players now go in computers and videogame machines as well as underneath the television set. In the converging world of digital music, movies and pictures, the technical specifications of the DVD's successor could theoretically affect sales of products ranging from Microsoft's Windows to Sony's PlayStation.
Electronics makers in Japan want to keep introducing new formats to stay ahead of competitors in China who have become a huge force in supplying cheap players. Even if Chinese companies end up assembling the new devices, Japanese rivals can still win by supplying key components and locking up patents embedded in the DVD's successor.
The dispute has even ensnared the U.S. and Chinese governments. The U.S. Department of Justice has begun a preliminary inquiry into whether the Sony camp unfairly blocked the other side's progress. Beijing is battling both sides: It's promoting a third DVD format, although that isn't expected to take off outside China.
It's too early for most consumers to start worrying about the format war. After all, a lot of families just unwrapped their first DVD player last Christmas. Everyone agrees that movies and audio CDs purchased for existing players will still work in the new generation of machines.
But connoisseurs who already have big TV screens and hookups for high-definition broadcasts may want one of the new players. The new discs hold several times as much information as a DVD -- including enough storage for hours of the data-packed, crystal-clear images required for high-definition television.
The roots of the current struggle lie in the mid-1990s, when Sony was licking its wounds from a second defeat in a technology standards war. Its Betamax standard was crushed in the 1980s by Matsushita's VHS, damaging Sony's sales in the multibillion-dollar market for VCRs. Then Sony failed to get most of its technology into the current DVD player. That was less costly but still embarrassing for the company that prides itself as a leader in innovation.
Determined to get a head start in the next standards war, Sony engineers began to experiment with a blue laser, whose narrower beam can be used to cram more data on a disc than the red laser used with CDs and DVDs.
In late 1998, Hiroshi Ogawa, one of the CD's developers, got the blue laser to read a disc in a prototype. But one detail worried him: He wanted to shrink the thickness of the disc's protective plastic layer to just one-tenth of a millimeter, or about the thickness of a human hair. That would increase the disc's data capacity. But Mr. Ogawa worried that such a disc might be impossible to make.
For help, Mr. Ogawa reached out to a loose community of his fellow Japanese optical-disc engineers who kept up a friendly exchange of ideas, even though they worked at rival makers. He was particularly close to Shin-ichi Tanaka of Matsushita, another longtime optical-disc specialist and the leader of his own coterie of engineers dubbed the Sword Swallowers Club.
With the help of the "optical-disc salon," as Mr. Tanaka calls it, Mr. Ogawa decided he could solve the disc-manufacturing problem. On Jan. 3, 2000, Mr. Tanaka invited Mr. Ogawa to a famous Kyoto temple to sip New Year's sake with the head priest. Then they repaired to a private room and talked about cooperating on the next-generation DVD player. The two men thought: If the world's two biggest consumer electronics makers agreed on a standard, what could stand in their way?
Plenty, it turned out. Toshiba engineer Hisashi Yamada, a no-nonsense man with a reputation for stubbornness, had directed his team to test both a disc with the 0.1-millimeter protective layer and another model with a 0.6-millimeter layer, the same as current DVDs. After a year and a half of experimenting, Mr. Yamada says he concluded that the thinner format was too hard to make, while the thicker one would make compatibility with current DVDs easier.
Toshiba was also serving as chairman of the DVD Forum, an industry consortium formed in 1995 to set DVD standards, and Mr. Yamada thought the next-generation DVD should be discussed there. So when Sony approached Toshiba to join the members-only alliance it had forged with Matsushita, Mr. Yamada said no. "Toshiba doesn't like political maneuvering," he says.
Sony and Matsushita soon attracted allies who preferred a closed alliance. They thought the industry forum, with its 200 members, was unwieldy. Besides, Toshiba's technology looked too similar to current DVDs. Japanese companies spent billions of dollars researching DVDs, only to see margins undercut by cheap Chinese copycats, and they didn't want that happening again. The Sony-Matsushita technology has more new features and thus is harder to copy, says Kazuhiro Tsuga, director of Matsushita's advanced appliances development center.
In February 2002, Sony, Matsushita and seven other companies announced the formation of what they called the Blu-ray group. Three other companies -- including Hewlett Packard Co. and Dell -- joined later. That summer, Toshiba and fellow Japanese electronics maker NEC Corp. presented their rival format, called HD DVD, to the DVD Forum for evaluation.
DISCS JOCKEY
As the industry looks to the future of DVDs, rival camps support two different technologies:
Blu-ray
o Main backers: Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Thomson
o Disk capacity: Up to 50 gigabytes
o Thickness of protective layer: 0.1 mm
HD DVD
o Main backers: Toshiba, NEC
o Disk capacity: Up to 30 gigabytes
o Thickness of protective layer: 0.6 mm
Even though the Sony-led Blu-ray members had formed their own club, they still played a key role at the DVD Forum, where they made up a majority of the steering committee. When the committee considered near-final versions of Toshiba's technology in June and September of 2003, it voted against an endorsement both times.
But behind the scenes the Toshiba-led format was starting to attract a diverse group of allies. One was Microsoft, which badly wants to extend its influence into other gadgets beyond the personal computer. It first started to show its video software at forum meetings at the end of 2002, lobbying to get the technology included in whichever disc format the forum ultimately blessed. Since January of this year it has tagged along on Toshiba's pitches to movie studios and others. Microsoft is offering studios a rock-bottom rate on its WMV-9 video compression software, which is used to squeeze movies onto a disc.
Microsoft says it isn't taking sides and would be happy to have its software incorporated into the Blu-ray format too. Amir Majidimehr, vice president of the Windows digital-media division, says Microsoft believes getting its software in DVD players will help stimulate demand for PCs that run its software in the future. As growth slows in its primary business of selling software to companies, Microsoft wants to tap into future waves of consumer spending on technology by ensuring its Windows operating system acts as a central "hub" that serves up entertainment to videogame machines, televisions and other gadgets.
Electronics newcomers such as Taiwanese disc and player manufacturers want to hold on to the gains they've made recently as the DVD became a mass-market, low-cost item. They like the Toshiba-led format because it's similar to current DVDs and easier for them to make -- and so keep their market share.
Better yet, by working through the DVD Forum Taiwanese companies think they can squeeze some of their own technology into the new standard. That could lower royalties. On current Taiwan-made DVD players, royalties can be as high as 30% of the sales price, says Der Ray Huang, deputy general director of Taiwan's quasigovernmental Industrial Technology Research Institute.
In November 2003, as the DVD Forum weighed the Toshiba-backed format for the third time, the giant chip maker Intel Corp. stepped in. Intel wants to make sure that high-definition DVD players work well with PCs using Intel chips and believes it can exert more influence through the DVD Forum. At the meeting, Intel proposed changing the rules to prevent abstentions from being counted as "no" votes, say people familiar with the situation.
At the urging of Intel, the amendment was written up during a coffee break, passed and immediately put into effect. The rule change, along with the surprise support of Blu-ray members Thomson SA of France and Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea, was enough to get one version of the Toshiba-backed format approved in an 8-6 vote, according to people familiar with the situation.
An Intel spokesman declined to comment on the meeting but says the company supports the DVD Forum because it is open to participation from a broad range of companies. Thomson and Samsung declined to comment on their votes but said they remain committed members of the Blu-ray group.
The forum steering committee last month approved a second, rewriteable version of the Toshiba-led disc format and gave a provisional nod to Microsoft's compression technology along with two others.
The drama is being watched anxiously by Hollywood, where DVD sales now account for more than 40% of revenue. Most major studios haven't committed to either side (except, of course, Sony Pictures). Studios think they have more to gain by fence-sitting while the competing camps woo them with private presentations and promises to pay more of the cost of advertising new movie-disc releases.
In a number of studio demonstrations, Sony has played Lawrence of Arabia on a split screen, with one half in high-definition and the other in regular DVD. One executive from another studio recalls being struck by a scene where T.E. Lawrence is gathering troops before battle. Even at the fringes of the high-definition frames, he recalls, "you could pick out the individual faces and see the decorations on horses." By contrast, "in the current DVD release, past Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole, past the principal actors, everyone was a blur."
Studios like to give engineers working in high-definition technology particularly challenging scenes from their own movies, to see how they come out. For example, Warner Bros. has tested its Matrix movies, to see how well the technology renders different hues of black worn by the characters. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. has used the car chase scene from its movie Ronin, a scene considered particularly complex because of the fast moves and repeated changes from dark to light.
The tests haven't revealed a clear winner. Both formats offer superior picture quality and copyright protection. Blu-ray backers say their discs hold more data; the other side says that with data compression, that difference doesn't matter.
Mr. Yamada of Toshiba and his cohorts say Blu-ray discs are so sensitive to grime they may need to be protected by a cartridge. Rubbish, responds Sony's Mr. Ogawa, who recently ground dirt into the face of a prototype Blu-ray disc -- which he then played -- to show a skeptical American company that the problem had been solved.
Both sides are now preparing to launch products. Sony already sells a $4,000 Blu-ray recorder in Japan, although demand has been weak. Matsushita says it will start sales in July of a Diga DVD recorder that plays Blu-ray discs. Samsung and LG Electronics Inc. of Korea say they'll have Blu-ray recorders on the market by the end of this year. Toshiba says it may offer a player with the DVD Forum-backed format for sale next year for $1,000.
The nightmare scenario for everyone involved would be a prolonged fight in the market between competing formats, since consumers may be so confused they refuse to buy either kind of disc. But there's no settlement in sight. "We at least aren't going to compromise," says Sony's Mr. Nishitani.
科技巨头卷入全球DVD标准之战
虽然DVD影碟机在前两年才刚刚取代老式录像机进入了家庭，但一场新的关于下一代高清晰度产品的战斗早已拉开帷幕了。谁能取得这场斗争的胜利，谁就能在电子消费品市场上独领风骚，施展巨大的影响力。几乎整个科技界都参与了进来：既有试图把触角伸入电子消费品市场的个人电脑业巨擘，也有希望与日本在制造业领域一争高下的亚洲新秀。
在上世纪七八十年代，VHS(家用录影系统)与Betamax(Beta制大尺寸磁带录像系统)曾就录像带的格式争得不可开交，到后来消费者们都被弄糊涂了，不知道买什么好，而如今的这场战争恐怕也是如此。
曾在索尼公司(Sony Corp., J.SNY, 又名：新力公司)研究Betamax的工程师kiyoshi Nishitani认为，这次大家会达成一致了，以前大家根本没想到这是块大蛋糕。Nishitani那时是主要的参战者。
站在索尼公司一边的有松下电器产业公司(Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., 6752.TO)、戴尔公司(Dell Inc., DELL)以及其他许多企业。另一阵营则由东芝公司(Toshiba Corp., 6502.TO)领头，并打算使用微软(Microsoft Corp., MSFT)的影像软件。
与以往自成一体的录像机不同，如今的DVD影碟机不仅运用在电视机上，还能用在电脑和电子游戏机上。鉴于数字音乐、电影和图像的结合日趋紧密，新一代DVD的技术标准从理论上说能影响许多产品的销售额，从微软公司的Windows操作系统到索尼公司的PlayStation游戏机，都不例外。
当前，日本的电子产品生产商们试图推出新的影碟机技术格式，以便在与中国的竞争中保持领先地位，后者现已成为廉价影碟机的主要供应商。最终，即使中国企业成为新产品的组装基地，日本同行依然可以成为赢家，充当关键零部件的供应商，同时保留新产品的专利技术。
这场斗争甚至牵动了美中两国政府。美国司法部(The U.S. Department of Justice)已展开初步调查，试图查明索尼阵营是否采取了不正当手段，以阻止另一阵营的前进步伐。而中国政府则对两方都持怀疑态度，它正在推广另一种新一代DVD技术标准，不过预计这一标准在中国以外不会流行。
对大多数消费者来说，现在就对这场格式大战忧心忡忡还为时过早。大家普遍认为，原先购买的电影碟片和CD在新一代影碟机上应当也能播放。
不过，那些早已拥有大屏幕电视机，并采用了高清晰度播放系统的鉴赏家们也许想尝尝鲜。新型光盘能储存的信息是DVD光盘的好几倍：能连续播放几个小时，同时图像非常清晰，能满足高清晰度电视的要求。
当前的这场竞争可追溯到上世纪九十年代中期。当时，索尼公司还在疗伤止痛--在关于技术标准的争斗中，该公司再次败北。索尼的Betamax标准在八十年代被松下的VHS标准打得一败涂地，致使索尼的产品销量在价值数十亿的录像机市场上受到了冲击。接下来，索尼又未能让当前一代的DVD影碟机采用自己的许多技术。虽然这次败得不算太惨，但也让一向自诩为技术革新领袖的索尼感到很丢脸。
索尼公司决心在下次技术标准之战中占据上风，它的工程师们已开始对一种蓝色激光进行试验，这种激光的光束更集中，比起目前在CD和DVD上采用的红色激光来，能在光盘上储存更多的数据。
1998年下半年，开发新型CD的工程师Hiroshi Ogawa成功地让蓝色激光在一台原型机上对光盘进行了读取。不过他碰到了一个问题：他想把光盘的塑料保护层的厚度减少到十分之一毫米，即一根头发丝那么细，因为这样一来就能增加光盘的数据存储量。但Ogawa担心研制不出那么薄的光盘。
于是，Ogawa向国内的同行们寻求帮助。这些研究光盘的工程师们关系融洽，虽然各自所属的公司互为竞争对手，他们还是经常进行交流。Ogawa与松下公司的Shin-ichi Tanaka的关系尤为密切，后者也是光盘领域的资深专家，在名为Sword Swallowers Club的小圈子里可谓翘楚。
在这个"光盘沙龙"帮助下（用Tanaka的话说），Ogawa觉得自己能解决光盘生产方面的问题了。2000年1月3日，Tanaka邀请Ogawa去东京一个知名的寺庙，与庙里的住持一道品尝日本米酒，庆祝新年的到来。接著，两人退到一
个僻静的地方，就合作开发新一代DVD影碟机进行了探讨。他们想：如果世界上最大的两家电子消费品生产商就有关技术标准达成一致，谁还是他们的对手？
可结果是对手一大堆。东芝公司的工程师Hisashi Yamada工作严肃认真，他的执著是出了名的。Yamada带领他的团队对保护层为0.1毫米的光盘和保护层为0.6毫米的光盘进行了测试。目前DVD光盘的保护层就便是0.6毫米。在经过了一年半的研究之后，Yamada得出结论，超薄光盘是无法生产出来的，而保护层较厚的光盘能与目前的DVD影碟机兼容。
东芝公司还是DVD论坛(DVD Forum)的主席，这是一个于1995年成立的旨在制定DVD技术标准的行业组织。Yamada认为，有关问题应在这个组织上进行讨论。因此，当索尼邀请东芝加入它与松下结成了两家联盟时，Yamada拒绝了
。他表示，东芝不喜欢耍政治花招。
索尼和松下很快找到了其他盟友，因为不少公司愿意保持更密切的关系。这些公司认为，只有200个会员的DVD论坛规模不够大。此外，东芝公司的技术与目前的DVD技术似乎非常像。日本的企业在研制DVD方面已花费了几十亿美元，结果却发现利润被中国的模仿者轻易地夺走了，因此日本企业界不希望类似事件再次发生。松下公司高级产品开发中心的负责人Kazuhiro Tsuga指出，两家公司的新技术有了更多的功能，没那么容易模仿了。
去年2月份，索尼、松下以及其他7家公司宣布结成了"蓝光集团"(Ble-ray group)，后来还有3家公司加入，其中包括惠普公司(Hewlett-Packard Co., HPQ)和戴尔公司。去年夏天，东芝则携手另一家电子消费品生产商日本电气公司(NEC Corp)，向DVD论坛提出了名为HD DVD的技术供业界讨论。
虽然由索尼领导的蓝光集团自成体系，但他们在DVD论坛仍扮演了重要角色：他们构成了该组织管理委员会的多数派。当该委员会在去年6月份和9月份考虑把东芝公司的技术定为最终标准时，蓝光集团两次投了反对票。
尽管如此，东芝推崇的新技术逐步深入人心，赢得了广泛的支持。微软就是其中之一，该公司很渴望在个人电脑之外的领域发挥自己的影响力。起初，微软于2002年年底在DVD论坛的会议上展示了自己的视频软件，并进行游说，希望这套软件能被选用，不管该论坛最终选择哪种技术标准。从今年1月份以来，微软就跟著东芝游说电影制片公司和其他同行。在推销WMV-9视频压缩技术时，微软给制片厂提供了低得不能再低的优惠价格。这种技术能把电影压缩到光盘上。 微软同时表示，它不会偏袒哪一方，并乐意让蓝光集团采用自己的软件。身为微软负责Windows数字媒体部门的副总裁，阿米而?马吉德米(Amir Majidimehr)表示，该公司认为，给DVD影碟机装上自己的软件能推动电脑的销售。向企业推销软件是微软的主营业务，但鉴于此项业务的发展趋缓，微软希望把握未来电子消费技术的脉搏，确保Windows操作系统能在电子游戏机、电视机和其他娱乐产品中扮演"神经中枢"的角色。
另一方面，随著DVD产品成为低成本的大众消费品，电子消费领域的后来者们，包括台湾的光盘和影碟机制造商，则希望巩固他们最近取得的胜利。这些企业偏爱东芝公司的技术，因为这种技术与当前的DVD产品比较吻合，更容易推广，从而使它们可以守住已获得的市场份额。
更重要的是，台湾企业希望通过DVD论坛，在新标准中为自己的技术赢得一席之地。这样能降低特许使用费。Der Ray Huang说，台湾产DVD影碟机目前的特许使用费高达售价的30%。Huang是台湾的半官方机构工业技术研究院(Industrial Technology Research Institute)的常务董事。
去年11月，当DVD论坛第三次讨论东芝的技术规范时，晶片制造巨头英特尔(Intel Corp., INTC)插了进来。英特尔希望，高清晰度的DVD影碟机能与采用该公司晶片的个人电脑配合默契，并认为自己能通过该论坛施加更多的影响。熟悉内情的人士说，在那次会议上，英特尔提出改变投票规则，禁止把弃权票视为反对票。
在英特尔的敦促下，大家在会议休息时对这项补充规定进行了讨论，并很快加以通过。知情人士指出，随著规则的改变，以及蓝光集团成员的倒戈，东芝倡导的技术标准获得了多数支持。令人吃惊的是，作为蓝光集团的成员，法国的汤姆逊公司(Thomson SA)和韩国的三星电子(Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., 005930.SE)站在了英特尔一边。
英特尔的发言人则拒绝对此次会议发表评论，但表示它支持DVD论坛，因为该组织欢迎各类公司的加入。汤姆逊公司和三星电子对他们在此次会议上的投票也不予置评，只是说他们依然是蓝光集团的忠实成员。
上个月，DVD论坛管理委员会通过了经过修改的由东芝提出的技术标准，同时对微软等3家公司的视频压缩技术给予了初步肯定。
这出戏让好莱坞看得很焦急，因为DVD的销售额如今已占到了好莱坞40%以上的收入来源。大多数制片公司尚未表示支持哪一阵营，（当然，索尼影视娱乐有限公司(Sony Pictures)是个例外）。好莱坞的制片公司觉得，作骑墙派对自己更有利，因为这样一来，竞争双方会私下提供好处，并在电影光盘发行的广告宣传中承担更多的费用。
在对制片厂的宣传活动中，索尼在一个一分为二的屏幕上放映了影片《沙漠枭雄》(Lawrence of Arabia)，其中一半显示了高清晰度DVD光盘的播放效果，而另一半显示的是常规DVD光盘的播放效果。某制片公司的经理回忆说，片中主人公劳伦斯(T.E.Lawrence)集结部队，准备战斗的那幕场景给他留下了深刻印象。他说，在播放高清晰度光盘的屏幕边缘，你仍可以辨别出每个人的脸，看到马上的装饰物。相比之下，普通光盘播放时，主要演员外的其他人就模糊不清了。
制片公司还喜欢从自己拍摄的影片中挑出一些场景，给那些研制高清晰度图像的工程师们出些难题，看看效果如何。例如，华纳兄弟公司(Warner Brothers)用《黑客帝国》(Matrix)系列影片进行试验，了解新技术对片中人物的黑色容装的分辨程度。米高梅公司(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., MGM)则用影片《冷血悍将》(Robin)的追车镜头来检验，因为这个场景特别复杂：镜头在飞快地移动，而黑暗光明不断交替变化。
测试结果表明，目前还难分高下。两种新技术都提供了高质量的图像，版权也得到了很好的维护。蓝光集团的支持者们声称，他们研制的光盘能存储更多的数据；而另一方表示，用上数据压缩技术后没什么差别。 东芝公司的Yamada及其同伴们说，蓝光集团推出的光盘对污垢的灵敏度很高，要用暗盒加以保护。而索尼公司的Ogawa对此嗤之以鼻，他最近在蓝光的光盘原型中放入灰尘，然后再播放，以便让一家抱有疑虑的美国公司确信问题已经解决了。
目前，双方都打算推出新产品。索尼已开始在日本出售价格为4,000美元的蓝光录影机，尽管需求不旺。松下则称，公司将在今年7月份推出一种播放蓝光光盘的Diga DVD录影机。韩国的三星电子和LG电子(LG Electronics Co.)表示，今年年底前将在市场上推出自己的蓝光录影机。东芝称，公司有可能在明年推出一款带有DVD论坛支持的技术标准的影碟机，售价为1,000美元。
对于所有卷入其中的人而言，旷日持久的技术规范之争将是一场恶梦，因为消费者可能会感到非常混乱，结果哪种产品也不买。不过，目前还看不到胜利的曙光。索尼的Nishitani表示，他们绝不会作出让步。
