DVD Demystified

50
Chapter 2
that MMCD would be standardized for computer data applications while
SD would be used for video. On September 15, 1995, the SD Alliance
announced that “considering the computer companies’ requests to enhance
reliability,” it was willing to switch to the Philips/Sony method of bit storage
despite a capacity reduction from 5 billion to 4.7 billion bytes. It complained
that circuit designs would have to be changed and that “reverification of disc
manufacturability” would be required but conceded that it could be done. It
did not concede the naming war, however, proposing that the SD name be
retained. Sony and Philips made a similar conciliatory announcement, and
thus, almost a year after they began, the hostilities officially ended.
Henk Bodt, executive vice president of Philips, said that the next step
was to publish in October a comprehensive specification. Mr. Bodt made
some notable predictions, stating that the new players would be “substantially
more expensive” than VHS players, at around $800. He also thought
that issues of data compression probably would make recordability realistic
only in the professional field. “Certainly I don’t think that these players
will replace the videocassette recorder.”
On September 25, 1995, OSTA announced establishment of the UDF file
system interchange standard, a vast improvement over the old ISO 9660
format, finally implementing full support for modern operating systems
along with recording and erasing. Work on support for application of the
UDF format to DVD was still underway.
Seeing an opportunity to make its own recommendations, the Interactive
Multimedia Association (IMA) and the Laser Disc Association (LDA, which
later changed its name to the Optical Video Disc Association—OVDA) held
a joint conference on October 19 to determine requirements for “innovative
video programming” based on years of experience with laserdisc and CD-
ROM. 17 The general consensus was that better video and audio were insufficient
and that DVD movie players required interactivity to be of more
interest to the worldwide mass market. The group recommended that baseline
interactivity be required in all DVD-Video players and also recommended
that the design allow optional addition of proven features such as
player control using printed bar codes, on-the-fly seamless branching under
program control, and external control. Some of the group’s recommendations,
such as random access to individual frames, graphic overlay, and mul-
17 At this meeting your humble yet foresighted author predicted that DVD would not appear in
the United States in meaningful numbers before 1997, despite manufacturer claims that it
would be ready in early 1996. It turned out that DVD did not appear in the United States in any
numbers at all before 1997.