The RW Products Promotion Initiative (RWPPI) held its final meeting last week and announced that it would stop its activities after nine years of promoting the DVD-RW/R-related and their compatibility.
The meeting was held on March 13 at Pioneer Corporation?s head office located in Meguro, Tokyo.
13 companies established the RWPPI in March 2000. Following the foundation, it managed booths at exhibitions worldwide for a period of nine years promoting DVD-RW/DVD-R related products, and strived to improve recording and playback compatibility among DVD-RW/DVD-R discs, devices and PC application software through the Round-Robin Test activities. In addition, it held regular meetings to exchange information regarding copyright, new products, technologies and market trends.
The results of the RWPPI's efforts include the wide support of the DVD-RW/-R discs by almost all DVD devices currently available commercially, and approximately 70% of the global production of recordable discs is accounted for by DVD-RW /DVD-R discs, according to the organization.
In addition, the RWPPI carried our Round-Robin tests aimed at improving recording and playback compatibility among optical storage discs, hardware devices and PC software. The organization conducted eight stages of verification checks, including joint tests with the Recordable DVD Council (RDVDC). A total of up to 54 companies including global optical storage discs, devices and PC software manufacturers participated in these activities. Tests of 2,239 items for a total of 1,097 models were carried out, and 11 presentation meetings were held worldwide to report the test results.
Mr. Gordon Yeh, chairman of the Taiwan Recording-Media Industries Association (TRIA) and CEO of Ritek Corp. said:
"The longstanding activities of the RWPPI have significantly contributed to the sound development of the entire DVD industry. Especially, the Round-Robin Test activities attained valuable achievements also for the Taiwanese industry."
As a conclusion, Mr. Asakura (Critic of Digital Media) firmly stressed that "in the midst of the increasing rivalry of HDD and memory storage media, the key survival of optical storage discs for archiving will depend on the unified will of the related manufacturers to continually stress the superiority and needs for optical discs in the market."
The RWPPI is scheduled to close its Office and Secretary and wind up its activities by the end of March 2009.