03/16/99

By Doug Bedell / The Dallas Morning News

If one ending to the movie Austin Powers weren't enough, home theater viewers can now select from three. They can also watch Contact with a relaxed Jodie Foster occasionally zooming into their living rooms to offer background on key scenes. Or they can completely warp the ultimate lesson of Ronin with a flick of the remote.

Digital video disc, or DVD, technology, long delayed by movie industry copyright worries and a format war with Circuit City's Divx, is finally leaping into America's living rooms, computer stations and sound systems.

For the uninitiated, digital versatile discs - often called digital video dics by the video industry -are a sort of supercompact disc with the ability to hold up to 17 gigabytes of data on a platter the size of a CD, which can store a mere 650 megabytes.

Given that kind of capacity, experts have little doubt that DVD-ROM will one day replace CD-ROM as the standard for personal computers. Already, major PC manufacturers such as Dell and Gateway are including DVD drives as options on standard models.

But it is DVD's ability to instantly display rich, wide-screen video - undergirded with quaking, six-speaker Dolby surround-sound - that captures imaginations in Hollywood and beyond.

"It's almost like dragging the guts of a big-time movie theater into your house," says Rene Rodriguez, a 23-year-old college student from Bedford who was shopping for new releases at an Arlington electronics store last week. "Well, actually it's better. You can't change the endings there. You can at my house."

The first generation of DVD television set-top players actually hit Dallas-area stores three years ago. But Hollywood was hung in technicalities. Title selection was spotty. All kinds of big-business infighting hindered the format's expansion.

First, the major movie houses couldn't decide whether DVD could be made secure enough for release. They wrangled to make sure reproductions couldn't be mass-produced, diluting their share of the booty.

"They'd been hyping DVD for years before it came to market," says Tom Bonjour, owner of Sound Idea in Arlington. "The lawyers and all these side issues got involved. You can't record a movie off your DVD player, thanks to all that."

Another industry issue kept pouring cement into DVD's shoes: Circuit City and a California law firm broke from the pack to create their own hybrid, Digital Video Express - the name of both a technology and the partnership. Divx, as they're called, gobbled up commitments from houses such as DreamWorks and Disney.

Consumers buy a film on Divx. After the first time they push the play button, they have 48 hours to watch the movie as many times as they want. They also can renew the time period for a small fee or pay more for unrestricted viewing.

Consumers were bombarded with the fact that Divx-enhanced machines can play regular DVDs, but DVD machines can't play Divx. Consequently, they worried that DVD technology would become outmoded prematurely. Remember laser discs?

All the side shows seem to be fading, Mr. Bonjour says. Purchasers of the first DVD set-top players once had to rely on his store for disc rentals. Now, more than 2,500 movies are available from sources ranging from the Internet to Blockbuster.

"People have been clamoring for this product," Mr. Bonjour says. "It was three to five years into the CD's existence before we saw demand like this. There's never been anything like it."

DVD can be many things to many people. Audiophiles are mesmerized by its reproduction of nuance. Several manufacturers have leaped in with audio-only decks that can expand existing home sound centers.

IBM, Intel, Matsushita Electric and Toshiba have developed a way to prevent illegal copying of DVD audio, removing a barrier to its adoption as a new music format. They created technology standards to electronically "mark" and code music on audio digital versatile discs. Top music companies such as EMI Group, Sony, Bertelsmann AG's BMG, Seagram's Universal Music Group and Time Warner's music unit are now backing the technology.

Computer aficionados have been astounded by the storage possibilities for data. Because DVD players can play regular CD-ROMs, many are upgrading their computer drives with DVD kits, then playing movies either on their PC monitors or through their computers onto TV screens.

Drives for DVD-RAM, another offshoot, have begun making their appearance at retail outlets. These computer-controlled machines, available for as little as $500, can record and re-record, or rewrite, data onto DVD. DVD-RAMs do not, however, play in DVD set-top boxes or handle multimedia tasks.

Among the endearing qualities of a DVD TV set-top box is the ability to zip instantly to specific scenes. Tight compression of the data makes any search a quick one.

DVD renters and buyers can also benefit from Hollywood's eccentricities. Outtakes, alternative endings, "directors' cuts," actor background features and narratives such as Ms. Foster's in Contact add adventure to the viewing experience.

In some titles, viewers can watch from different camera angles. The sound even shifts with each change. And the film industry sees great potential in storing soundtracks in multiple languages within each disc.

Major computer manufacturers are including DVD drives in more models, and DVD set-top boxes seem to be catching on quickly.

"The day they came in, I had a list of 25 to 30 customers who I had to call," Mr. Bonjour says. "These were people who already knew quality video. I guess many of them were laser disc buyers before. But people are watching VHS tapes right now, and a lot of them don't realize how bad that really is. That's changing."

Last year, prices began dropping as more than 40 manufacturers hurried to market with a wide range of set-top machines. At Sound Idea, Mr. Bonjour's store, shoppers can sample machines ranging from $549 to $2,500. Wal-Mart, Kmart and other mass-marketing outlets have begun stocking DVD players for as little as $399.

With its inherent versatility, DVD looks to be a force throughout the electronics industry. And the numbers indicate that VCRs may soon face a challenge as the home theater medium of choice.

Only 370,000 DVD players were sold in 1998, but the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association says more than 3 million will be gobbled up this year.

Meanwhile, the number of movie titles is expected to double to 5,000, including many first-run selections.

"Not even the videocassette recorder or the compact disc player - two of our industry's greatest success stories - came close to these kinds of numbers when they were introduced," association president Gary Shapiro says.

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