DVD Forum conference Japan: The next generation DVD - Printer Friendly version without Comments

Appeared on: Thursday, October 9, 2003
DVD Forum conference Japan: The next generation DVD

The DVD Forum Japan Conference 2003 was held yesterday in Tokyo.

According to statements during the greeting speech, worldwide shipments of DVD players have reached the 50,000,000 during 2003, and are expected to reach the 60,000,000 units for 2004. Furthermore, sales of the DVD recorders have also been rapidly increased.

The members of the DVD Forum discussed the possibility of expanding the DVD standard and releasing the Version 1.0 (current version 0.9). The new standard will include all those parameters involved towards the raising of the interactivity of the DVD-Video. The "Enhanced DVD" (DVD-ENAV) standard is expected to add internet functions to DVD Video and the related devices.

Moreover, the examination of DVD video standard Ver.2.0 is under progress. The most important point of Ver.2.0 is the correspondence to HD video contents. The new standard will be decided in June 2004.

Regarding the future video encoding/decoding, adoption of the H.264, MPEG-2, WMV9, and H264+MPEG-2 hybrid protocols are under consideration. In addition, the 5.1ch (24 bits linear PCM / 96kHz), the Dolby Digital Plus, and the DTS++ proposals for audio are currently examined.

The maximum writing speed for the DVD-RAM format will be also increased. The aim is the standarization of 5x recording for DVD-RAM, by the end of 2003.

In case of DVD-R and DVD-RW, the 8x and 4x recording speeds (respectively) will be officially included in standards during November.

Details about the DVD Audio recording standard are not yet officially defined. All audio codecs are included in the possible scenario (LPCM/PPCM (MLP)/AC3/MPEG-1/2 Layer II/DTS/ATRAC3/mp3PRO/MPEG-2 AAC), but none of them is clearly defined as a dominant. However, recording in LPCM and PPCM offers the best compatibility with present DVD players.