DVD Demystified

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Chapter 13
poor picture quality, no decent still-frame capability, and no random access.
The subsequent “advance” was digitized video, using QuickTime and Video
for Windows, playing from a CD. It was flexible and could be integrated with
computers, but it lost vital detail with its quarter-screen fuzzy picture and
required a TV converter box or a video projector for full-class presentation.
Publishers were next asked to support Video CD, which provided full-screen
digital video but still lacked quality and had almost no installed base of players.
Then came the Internet, which was highly interactive and timely, but
essentially precluded motion video. It’s little wonder that gun-shy publishers
are not eager to embrace yet another newfangled medium.
The failure of DVD-Video to unseat laserdisc in the classroom hardly
means that laserdisc’s days are unnumbered, however. Beginning in 1996,
educational sales of players and discs dropped almost as quickly as in the
home market. Competition from computers, and especially the Internet, is
finally proving too much for the reliable but no longer glamorous workhorse,
which will slowly decline over the next decade. The end of the heyday
of laserdiscs signals the decline of all stand-alone audio/visual players for
training and education.
DVD will succeed in the educational environment, but via computers
rather than DVD-Video players. Long before educational DVD discs are
plentiful enough, new computers being purchased by schools will be able to
play DVD-Video discs as well as educational DVD-ROM software. Ironically,
this promises to provide the market that educational publishers need
in order to embrace DVD-Video. Cleverly designed products will be able to
work in DVD computers at school and in DVD-Video players at home. Home
education, both formal and informal, will drive the demand for this kind of
product.
In the long run, multimedia PCs will replace classroom TVs, VCRs, overhead
projectors, and laserdiscs, just as these have replaced filmstrip projectors
and 16mm movies. Most lightweight content will come from the
Internet, but the necessary graphics, audio, and video will be provided by
DVD. Inasmuch as technology adoption in schools typically lags behind
business and home use by several years, the process may take some time.
This is unfortunate, since the case for computer and media integration in
education is more compelling than almost anywhere else. Technology is not
a magic elixir that will cure the ills of the education system, but it is a very
powerful tool that when wielded properly can be truly effective. DVD-Video
as currently implemented does not seem to be well suited as an educational
tool, but computers combined with DVD in both -ROM and -Video form
promise to substantially advance the state of the art by providing the kind
of high-capacity knowledge bases and high-impact sensory environments
that foster more effective learning.
TEAMFLY