1997 Fools: DVD Consortium Throws in the Towel
Subject: DVD Consortium Throws in the Towel
From: missmanp@milo.cfw.com
Date: 1997/04/01
Message-Id: <859875770.5859@dejanews.com>
Newsgroups: alt.video.dvd
Citing disappointing test marketing results, the DVD consortium has
decided to discontinue production and marketing of DVD products.
In association with this announcement Time-Warner has shutdown
future DVD production, and cancelled negotions which could
have resulted in "kickback" payments to Paramount and Universal
Pictures.
The head of Toshiba said that they would probably make another run
at the digital disk market sometime after HDTV was in use, and
when they could get sufficient bandwidth from the disk subsystems to
provide artifact free viewing and near perfect color rendition. He also
stated that this would give the other TV manufacturers time to
incorporate component inputs into their sets, so that when and if the
format is relaunched in the future, TVs would be able to reproduce
the full capabilities of the medium.
On the issue of regional lockouts, he said that these will probably
remain in any future release of the format, but that he would put this
up for re-consideration by the consortium, since it may have been
a factor in consumer acceptance of DVD.
The VP of DVD disk production for Matsushita said the they would
mothball the current mastering and stamping facilities, and hope to
reuse them later in a few years, when the format could be made
more acceptable to the public.
Personally, I'm very very unhappy about this state of affairs, and I
hope all you LD lovers who helped to sink this wonderful format are
satisfied. I also hope that you realize what day it is, and that the
first of April means the same thing in Asia and Europe that it does
here in the US.
Paul Missman
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