RWPPI
Keynote Speech by Koki Aizawa

I thank you very much for joining us in this RWPPI Press Conference today.

My name is Koki Aizawa. I assumed the office of Representative Director of the RWPPI recently. As you may know, Dr. Masao Sugimoto, who led the RWPPI since the foundation in May 2000, unfortunately passed away suddenly at the end of last year.
His death was a big shock to us all, and to me in particular. However, because I worked closely with Dr. Sugimoto since the founding of the RWPPI, it is my wish to work even harder on his behalf, and that, as a new Representative Director, I hope to have your same support you extended to Dr. Sugimoto.

First of all, I want to　re-state the objectives of the RWPPI.

The RWPPI, or RW Products Promotion Initiative, began operation in May 2000 in order to promote products supporting DVD-R and DVD-RW formats, established by the DVD Forum. We opened our liaison offices in the Untied States in January 2001, and in the United Kingdom in August in the same year. Today, we have 52 members of manufacturers for hardware, recording media, application software and key parts, throughout the world.

The RWPPI is an industry alliance, trying to maximize the benefits of users through various activities, aiming at enhancing the sound growth of products and its applications that support the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats.

One of our most effective activities is called the "Round Robin Test," where member companies check recording compatibility with each other's products, and verify playback compatibility with playback-only DVD drives and players, the primary advantage of the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats.
There are four working groups, conducting the Round Robin Tests. They are: Physical Format working group, Logical Format working group for PC writers, Logical Format working group for Home recorders, and Playback Compatibility working group. We are proud that this activity is at the forefront of the industry.

Stage 1 of the Round Robin Test successfully completed last year. It focused on "recording compatibility" at the normal, 1X speed. As a result, member companies were able to resolve various compatibility issues within their products before they released their products to the market. You can download a report of the Stage 1 test results, from our RWPPI website.

In Stage 2, which began in December last year, 30 member companies have been checking compatibility at high-speed recording.

I believe the Round Robin Test benefits member companies' product designs, and help increase the satisfaction of their users.

Now, I want to discuss the recent situation on recordable DVD.

As you remember, the compact disc was first introduced as a read-only medium. It was only 1990, when CD-R appeared on the market, that the compact disc has been recognized as a recording medium.

On the contrary, DVD was considered not only as a read-only medium, but a recording medium as well, from the very beginning when it was unveiled in 1996. People now think of "Recording to DVD" as a matter of course.

Today, CD-R and CD-RW are the popular recordable media not only for A/V applications, but as an indispensable peripheral for PCs. However, with higher speeds and larger volumes of data being handled by PCs, CD's transfer rate and storage capacity are no longer large enough. DVD arrived as a logical solution.

DVD's high performance has enabled a new "killer" application that was not possible with CD, that is, the recording of 135 minutes of high-quality video.

With this killer application, DVD is now incorporated into many PCs and A/V equipments. In Japan, DVD recorders become very popular. It will be not too long that DVDs replace VCRs as a home video recording system, and this trend is expected to spread worldwide.

If your task is just to develop only for your own recording system, there will exist a number of different recording systems, but since people record contents in order to play them back, trouble-free "playback" should be the user's ultimate objective.

Accordingly, it is extremely important that recorded DVDs can be played back reliably on as many playback-only devices as possible. Among the DVD Forum formats, DVD-R and DVD-RW discs that have been recorded in Video Mode satisfy this requirement.

Optical discs have a significant advantage over tapes. Previously, random access during playback was one of the biggest advantages of optical discs. Though that is indeed a great advantage, an even greater advantage is the random access during recording.

With DVD-R and DVD-RW, this special "random access" capability is embodied in a recording standard known as the Video Recording or, VR Mode. This provides a rich array of editing features, such as "frame-by-frame" editing of contents.

Sony Corporation has recently released a camcorder that uses an 8-cm DVD-RW disc. This is a wonderful application that takes maximum advantage of the features of the VR mode.

DVD-RW will give birth to a new culture. For example, users will capture private video with a DVD-RW camcorder, record TV programs on a DVD-RW recorder, and import the recorded data to a PC, where they edit the contents or add effects, to make a "My Favorite DVD" disc. Later, they will enjoy watching the disc with their family, by replaying it on a DVD player in a different room or in an automobile. We firmly believe that this is really possible with the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats.

At present, there are three recordable formats based on DVD Forum standards ﾑ DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM. Each format has specific individual features of its own, but DVD-RW was developed from the write-once DVD-R. In other words, DVD-RW is a rewritable version of the DVD-R. Therefore, the DVD-R/DVD-RW combination drives are well received by the PC market.

There is yet another system, known as +RW, which is not a DVD Forum standard.

When we look at the current market, we see there are generally starting to follow two trends. One is a product known as "DVD-Multi," accepting DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM. Another is one known as "Dual," accepting DVD-R, DVD-RW, +R, and +RW.

The important point here is that both types of products actually use the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats that we are recommending. If you make judgements from the customer's perspective, what could be more beneficial than using DVD-R and DVD-RW?

Hardware continues to develop, and users can replace older models at any time, but recorded discs are valuable assets for users who continue to add new discs to their library every day, with the intention of keeping these recordings for long time.

We, at the RWPPI, look forward to continuing our hard work to ensure that the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats assure both compatibility and validity into the future, and will be accepted as the world standard of DVD recording.

Thank you very much.