April 1999
DVD Debuts
By Lowell Rapaport
The latest drives, jukeboxes and perspectives in this burgeoning market.
Document professionals have always wanted a storage solution with the capacity of magneto-optical or tape with the low cost of CD. Is DVD the answer?
As 1998 turned to 1999, Panasonic (Milpitas, CA), Toshiba (Irvine, CA) and Hitachi (Brisbane, CA) began shipping their DVD-RAM-standard drives in quantity. One of the beauties of DVD-RAM drives is that they can read your legacy CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW discs. Whatıs more, theyıre priced aggressively. Single DVD-RAM drives were introduced at $800 and street prices are already hitting the $500 range. These prices are only a little higher than high-end CD recorders and are half the price of MO drives. Low prices and broad compatibility are usually the sure signs of a winner in the IT industry. CD, Zip and DAT are prior examples of this.
Where there are new drives, there are invariably new jukeboxes, so expect to see DVD libraries at this yearıs AIIM show. Plasmon, JVC and Kodak are ready to jump on the DVD-RAM bandwagon. While the tired and troublesome format war of words rages on, the growing list of products lining up in the DVD-RAM camp will make it harder for rival formats to prevail.
The Drives Have it
If DVD truly is a replacement for CD, then CD users are facing the biggest paradigm shift since the introduction of CD technology more than ten years ago. DVD-RAM brings the ability to read and write directly from the desktop, to desktops, workstations and jukeboxes. Formerly, users had to rely on CD recording software that required careful planning. Packet writing is a recent technology that makes it possible for users to directly interact with CDs and now DVD-RAM.
The drives of interest to document imaging users are writable DVD drives: DVD-R and DVD-RAM. DVD-ROM drives and jukeboxes are available, but the only DVD recorder that creates discs for these drives is the $17,000 Pioneer DVR-S101. Most firms canıt justify the high cost of this drive. Pioneer (Long Beach, CA) recently announced a second-generation DVD recorder. The new recorder will support 4.7 gigabytes per surface on write-once DVD-R media. However, the planned ıless-than-$5,000ı price point is still well into four figures. Plus, the discs may have the same read compatibility problems as DVD-RAM. This drive is expected to ship in Q2.
The advantage of DVD-R is that it sports a user experience similar to that of CD. You use the same software to burn DVD-Rs as CD-Rs. This should make it easy for software companies used to making disc images and file caching for CD recording to adapt to DVD recording. It also leaves intact all the disc recording practices that IT departments have been perfecting over the last few years.
DVD-RAM drives are available from three manufacturers. The Panasonic LF-D101 ($800) is a trayless, front-loading drive. Discs are inserted into a slot on the driveıs front. The Hitachi (Brisbane, CA) GF-1050 ($800) (see review, page 42) has a traditional tray in which you place CDs or the DVD-RAM cartridge. Toshibaıs SD-W1101 DVD-RAM drive ($700) also accepts the DVD-RAM disc cartridges.
All the DVD-RAM drives are available with either SCSI or IDE interfaces and all use the DVD-RAM cartridge.
Panasonic plans to extend DVD-RAM into other applications, such as video recording. If this is successful, the cost of developing DVD-RAM drives can be leveraged off of massive consumer sales just as the cost of developing CD drives has been leveraged from audio CD sales. The advantage for imaging users is lower drive and media costs and wider deployment and compatibility for DVD-RAM.
A controversial part of the DVD-RAM standard is the cartridge in which every disc is mounted. Cartridges protect the disc from fingerprints and scratches. Damage is potentially a bigger problem on a disc with at least four times the capacity of a CD (MO discs are encased in cartridges for the same reason).
The makers of CD jukeboxes have no provision for cartridges. Most jukeboxes have their own disc carriers, so the cartridges are simply thrown away. DVD-RAM media manufacturers like Maxell are expecting to sell cartridgeless DVD-RAM discs in bulk packs, and single-sided discs will be removable from the cartridge.
DVD Jukeboxes Multiply
With advances in capacity and speed being made in all other storage technologies, it is not surprising that makers of CD jukeboxes have been eager to harness DVD. After all, with a field upgrade or minor product redesign, they can quadruple jukebox capacity, making their products more competitive with MO and tape. DVD-RAM marks the first real capacity upgrade for CD jukebox manufacturers and users. Now, just a few months after the introduction of DVD-RAM drives, there are already several DVD-RAM jukeboxes in beta, most of which should be shipping as this article sees print.
Since cartridgeless DVD-RAM discs are so thin, a lot of near-line storage can be packed into a compact space. A CD jukebox can practically fit inside the MO jukebox with room to spare. DVD elevates the capacity of the CD form factor closer to MO, so you get tremendous amounts of storage in a very small footprint.
The highest disc-density jukeboxes are from NSM Jukebox. All four models of NSMıs formerly CD-only jukeboxes are being made available with DVD-RAM drives. The CDR 100D - 1 Drive, 100 disc capacity (260 gigabytes, no availability yet) - $6,750 Mercury 40D ($18,500 with 4 DVD-RAM drives), the Satellite ($13,000 with 2 drives, $16,200 with 4 drives) and the new Galaxy ($41,000 with 14 drives) (see ıFirst Looks,ı page 11).
Cygnet (San Jose, CA ) is shipping two DVD jukeboxes., the DVD 100 ($6,400 with 1 drive, $10,000 with 4 drives) and the InfiniDVD, a large 250-slot ($15,000) or 500-slot ($18,500) jukebox that can be equipped with up to eight or four drives, respectively. The DVD 100 can house one to four drives. Discs are arranged in five 20-disc magazines. Swap time is rated at less than ten seconds and the robotics are rated at more than 1 million mean swaps before failure (MSBF). The InfiniDVD is a large box in the same league as the Plasmon D480 and the NSM Galaxy. Its swap time is between 11 and 15 seconds.
Larger disc-capacity jukeboxes are in vogue among manufacturers. According to Wayne Augsburger, vice president of sales and marketing at Cygnet, even larger jukeboxes are planned. ıWeıre working on a 1,000-slot jukebox that should be available by mid-year,ı he says. Such a large DVD-RAM jukebox will have a storage capacity in excess of 2.5 terabytes, a capacity previously available only in tape libraries, MO and large format jukeboxes.
Plasmon (Eden Prairie, MN) is expected to have DVD jukeboxes available in time for AIIM. As of this writing, Plasmonıs DVD-RAM products are in late beta. Plasmon will use the current CD jukebox series, the D120, D240 and D480 jukeboxes with DVD-RAM drives. All thatıs necessary is that the drives be remanufactured to work with the jukebox robotics. Firmware changes have to be made in the jukeboxıs motherboard. DVD-RAM versions of Plasmonıs jukeboxes are expected to debut at AIIM this year.
A fourth company to announce DVD-RAM jukeboxes is JVC (Cypress, CA). JVCıs DVD-RAM jukeboxes are due in June. DVD-ROM jukeboxes are available now. However, youıd have to use Pioneerıs expensive DVD-R recorders to create ROM-readable DVDs.
JVCıs MC-2100U ($9,000 for DVD-ROM version) is a 100-disc jukebox with two 50-disc magazines, two or four drives and a swap time of about 2 seconds. The MC-1200U is a 200-disc capacity jukebox with one to six drives ($13,400 with two DVD-ROM drives). At 600 slots, the MC-1600U is one of the largest DVD jukeboxes available ($20,000 with two DVD-ROM drives).
Pricing for the DVD-RAM versions o f these jukeboxes were not finalized at this writing. Richard Young, vice president at JVC Professional computer products estimates that the 100-disc MC-2100U will priced at about $11,000 with two DVD-RAMdrives.
Finally, Kodak (Rochester, NY) has announced that there will be DVD-RAM versions of their two jukeboxes Digital Science Library 54 and 44. The jukeboxes are relatively simple and affordable. The jukeboxes have two SCSI buses, and the disc magazines are hot swappable. Single-drive versions will sell for less than $6,000 and $8,000, respectively.
Plan Your Upgrade
If youıre buying your first jukebox, then the decision to go DVD is dependent on your need for capacity and the need to keep costs down. Right now, DVD-RAM jukeboxes are the lowest cost near-line storage after tape. For example, the Plasmon D120 fitted with two CD drives is $6,500. The same jukebox fitted with DVD-RAMdrives will cost around $10,000. For a 53% higher price, you get 400% more storage.
Another factor in favor of DVD-RAM is footprint. A 500-disk MOjukebox can fill a small room. A DVD jukeboxe with similar capacity can fit beside a desk. The only thing working against DVD as compared to MO is speed, but CD/DVD jukebox makers are aggressively developing caching solutions so you can keep frequently accessed files online.
If you already have a CD juke, then the decision becomes whether you should upgrade to DVD. Right now, the price delta between CD and DVD jukes is roughly $1,500 to $2,000 per drive. If youıre not running out of room in your existing CD jukeboxes, the best short-term strategy is to keep them running and move to DVD jukeboxes when you need additional storage. When you start maxing out your old CD jukebox, you can add a DVD jukebox and start day-forward recording in the new format. Alternatively, you can intermix CD and DVD discs within a DVD-RAM jukebox, but you wouldnıt want to tie up lots of high-capacity slots with low-capacity CDs.
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