Combo drives record discs playable in standard players.
Introduction
There are 10 million to 13.5 million DVD drives in the US, and the number is doubling every year. And who hasn't got a CD player of one form or another these days? Now, a new technology is poised to allow computer users, for the first time, to create discs readable by standard DVD or CD players.
Next-generation Removable Storage
Slated to begin shipping to OEMs in Q1 2001, and announced as the "SuperDrive" by Apple on Jan. 9th, is a combination DVD-R/RW and CD-R/RW drive developed by Pioneer. This drive, however, isn't Apple-specific by any means. It uses the PC-standard ATAPI interface, meaning that PC users will, in 2001, gain the ability to read and write both CDs and DVDs that can be played back with off-the-shelf consumer players.
Price
Apple boasts that it is the first to market with the technology, but, in fact, the technology made quite a splash a few days earlier at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. There, Compaq on Jan. 4th announced a Presario 7000 model equipped with the SuperDrive and Tech TV's Leo Laporte reported that the Pioneer DVD-R/RW CD-R/RW combo drive would sell for about $1000 US as a retail upgrade. This is consistent with Apple's pricing, which sees its SuperDrive-equipped Mac command a US$700 price premium over a unit with a CD-RW drive.
Of course, as with virtually all new technologies, these prices rapidly fell. By November 2001, the street price of the Pioneer A03 drive had fallen to about C$880 -- less than half its original price.
ATAPI
Being an ATAPI-standard drive, the unit has the ability to read standard CDs without any additional software or drivers. However, to burn discs, you will need to install some additional software, such as the iDVD or iTunes applications on the Mac, or PC equivalents. Typically, computer builders license drivers from the manufacturer or a third party for inclusion in a retail system. Apple partnered with Pioneer for the drive and based its DVD software on technologies acquired from Astarte. On the PC, many CD-RW drives come bundled with software from Veritas and/or Adaptec.
Media Costs
Apple sells a 5 pack of recordable DVD media for US$29.95. However, the manufacturer's suggested list price is substantially higher. Apple may be selling the media at or below cost to avoid the objections that appear to have so far stifled adoption of recordable DVD and other rewriteable technologies with relatively expensive media. CD-RW discs, for example, didn't catch on with consumers until their price approached that of CD-R discs, which hold 650 or 700 MB of data and currently cost about 50 cents apiece. An estimated 320,000,000 blank CDs were sold in the US in 2000. (That's more disks than there are people in the country.)
For Further Reading
Similar Products
Ricoh's MP9120A is a combo DVD/CD-RW drive, delivering a 12x10/32x CD/RW and an 8x DVD reader for about $280 US.
Also in Nov. 2001, HP announced that Pavilion 995 PCs equipped with DVD+RW drives began hitting retail shelves.
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