The 29th RWPPI General Meeting was held on Feb. 17, 2005 at the Pioneer Corporation head office in Meguro.

The meeting started with the speech by Mr. Koki Aizawa - Representative saying: "Much talk on falling DVD Recorder prices are made, but prices should settle to appropriate price levels from now on. Business is tough, but steady developments in technology are in progress. I look forward to your continued efforts so that we may reflect upon a healthy year end for this year as well" ending the speech on the future of the industry business, with words of encouragement to the members.

In continuation, the Report on the International CES 2005 held early this January in the U.S.A. was made by the RWPPI secretariat, followed with the conceptual exhibit explanation for CeBIT Hanover in March.

Next, the progress report of the Joint Round Robin Test (JRT) by the Round Robin Test chairman, Mr. Utsumi of Pioneer Corporation was made. It was followed by the explanation of the plan for a joint seminar at CeBIT by the RWPPI Round Robin Test and RDVDC's CWG.

IThis was then continued by an explanatory report regarding the 8.5GB Dual Layer recording capable DVD-DL Disc Ver. 3.0 standard by Mr. Taniguchi of Pioneer's Optical Disc Systems Development Center. The discs are expected to be out in the market by spring of this year. He explained about the disc layout, and format for high-speed recording methods.

At this General Meeting, there were 2 Special Guest Lectures this time: The first was presented by the multimedia critic, Mr. Reiji Asakura on the theme: "Digital AV trend in International CES 2005." In his lecture, he expressed his view of seeing the IT revolution in the home at this year's CES fair. Some of the trend setting products for the U.S. Consumer Electronics market were: "Strong increase of HDTV," "Movements in expansion of large screen TVs," "Increase in Rear projection TV," "Battle for next generation DVD," "Developments in Home Networks," as such keyword concepts were introduced, with photos of his observation. He ended his presentation concluding that AV and IT, Packaged products and Communication links will be more closely unified with ever more speed.

The final special lecture was by Mr. Eiichi Katayama of the Nomura Securities Co., Ltd., Financial & Economic Research Center, Senior Securities Analyst on the topic: "Observation of Japanese Industry Business Model for Flat TV market." As an analyst, he started his presentation of the flat TV market from a total global perspective, and then breaking it down further to the comparison of the U.S. and Japanese markets.

From Mr. Katayama's observation, he emphasized that "the bulk of the market's volume zone in the age with abundant HDTV contents will be centered on 40" size screens, where the battle between Liquid Crystal Displays against PDPs on a worldwide scale will occur. In the end, the manufacturer, which cares for developing originality of their products, will be one of the key factors for their survival. He encouraged all the attending manufacturers to quickly create a unique PDP, a unique DVD recorder, and to spread it worldwide bringing high profits as a business model" to end the meeting.