The 26th RWPPI General Meeting was held on August 26th.
At the beginning, Mr. Koki Aizawa - RWPPI Representative said: "As this is the year for the Olympics, the market was very active with the summer sales competition." Brought on by highly favorable DVD video camera sales using the DVD-RW format by Sony, and corresponding succession by each 8cm DVD-R and -RW disc manufacturers, one can reassuringly feel the expansion of DVD-RW related products." In addition, "The growth of DVD recording machines is accountable to 80% using DVD-RW compatible machines. This evidences the rise of the user's evaluation of the excellent characteristic feature of DVD-RW's compatibility. Starting from this autumn and year end, we will be entering our Christmas sales season, where I believe DVD-RW & -R related products will sell vigorously, while also hoping to see more and more technical developments from each company," ending the speech with strong encouragement to the members.

Six companies joined as new members this time. We welcome Daxon Technology Inc., Nan Ya Plastics Corporation, Infomedia Inc., LITE-ON IT Corporation, UmeDisc Ltd., and DigiOn Inc. Moreover, South Korean company - Infodisc Technology Korea Ltd. introduced the company name change to New Star Digital Co. Ltd.

This was continued by Ms. Aoki's presentation from Pioneer on the update situation report of the EU Copyright Levy, with details of the recording media levy situation in each country of Europe, generating great interest among the members.
Next, the RRT chairman, Mr. Uchiumi, presented the report concerning the RRT seminar held on July 29th in Taiwan. As a result of this seminar, a lot of new members entered to participate, making it a great success. Details are introduced in a related article, as you may click and view here, (PDF:17kb)please.

In addition, announcement from the RWPPI secretariat on the outline for the CEATEC Japan 2004 exhibition in October was made, where more that 200,000 visitors are expected this year. RWPPI reported intentions to appealing push the concept of convenience with DVD-RW.

2 companies made the usual new products introduction: Pioneer Corporation and Sharp Corporation. The DVD drive for PC, compatible for 16x high speed media recording as DVR-A08, and high speed DVD drive for notebook type PC were introduced by Mr. Yoshimura of Pioneer Corp. first. Especially, the feature in which stability was given to the recording and playback with the liquid crystal tilt mechanism pick-up technology was introduced in detail.
This was continued by the introduction from Mr. Imai of Sharp Corp. (Photo) with their new Digital Hi-Vision Recorder product. Mr. Imai demonstrated the new product DV-HRD200 together with detailed explanations from planning and development for the creation of the best recorder to record High-Definition Television broadcasting.

As the last item on the agenda, a special lecture by Mr. Takutoshi Fujiwara of Fujiwara Rothchild Ltd. was made on the topic "Optical Disc Technology & Market Trend Analysis -Focusing on Recordable DVD and Future Technology -." As a specialist on optical media industry trends, Mr. Fujiwara presented the current outline report of optical media on the whole, together with DVD media problems and possibilities. An analytical report on the next generation of optical media technologies were also presented, sending high expectations for the evolution of media to the related member companies, and ending the meeting successfully..

Mr. Takutoshi Fujiwara-Fujiwara Rothchild, Ltd.