PC Magazine: CES Storage Preview: High-Def DVD and Plummeting Flash Prices

A Bruising Battle for DVD's Future On Thursday, January 6th, the two camps fighting over which side will control the high-definition DVD standard will host dueling press conferences. The two press conferences are scheduled about 1/2 hour apart, but at different locations.

On one side are the companies that initially seemed to have a lock on the future standard, the Blu-ray Disc Association. Spearheaded by Sony and Philips, the original developers of the CD standard, Blu-Ray sports a long list of supporters, including JVC, Yamaha, Samsung, Hitachi and others.

The relatively new kid on the block is HD-DVD. Initially backed by Toshiba and NEC, the new standard has received the tacit backing of the DVD Forum, which approved a spec for HD-DVD. HD-DVD recently received an additional shot in the arm when four major studios announced they would ship content on HD-DVD. Paramount, Universal, Warner and New Line, however, refused to exclusively endorse a single standard.

So it looks like a format war reminiscent of the Betamax versus VHS era may be shaping up. If that happens, look for consumers to avoid making the choice until a clear winner emerges. That will likely affect sales of high definition DVD drives and recorders in the next couple of years.

The HD-DVD press conference is at 5:30 - 6:30 on January 6th at the Bellagio Resort and Casino. The Blu-Ray press event is at 4:00 - 5:00 on January 6th at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Room S228. In the past few months, flash memory prices have dropped substantially, enabling companies to ship 1GB memory cards and memory keys at prices below $100. This, in turn, has affecting prices of compact rotating storage, such as Hitachi microdrives.

The various providers of flash memory devices are touting higher capacities, in order to recapture revenues that have diminished due to price decreases. The landscape seems to have stabilized somewhat, though the xD format seems to be losing some ground. Secure Digital (SD) cards have shot up in popularity, while Compact Flash is still common, particularly for applications that require larger capacities. Meanwhile, Sony's Memory Stick Pro capacities are up to 2GB.

Small Rotating Media The competition for tiny rotating media is also heating up at this year's CES. For a number of years, Hitachi's storage group (formerly IBM Storage) has had the only solution for compact hard drives at 1-inch and under. The Microdrive has attained capacities up to 4GB, making it a favorite among digital photographers. JVC is even shipping a digital camcorder using a Microdrive for storage.

Later, Cornice Technologies arrived on the scene with its "Storage Element", though the company seems to have hit a wall at around 2GB. However, Toshiba announced its 0.85" solution last year, and is now shipping at capacities up to 4GB. Seagate is shipping a 1-inch drive at capacities up to 5GB, including it's slick little 5GB Pocket Drive, a hockey-puck sized external USB 2.0 drive.

Look for tiny magnetic storage to make a big splash at CES, as they offer capacities and pricing well-suited for compact music players, digital camcorders and even smart phones.

Big Storage Gets Bigger Drives 1.8-inches in diameter and larger still make up the bulk of rotating magnetic storage. Hitachi claims that the future digital household may contain as many as twenty hard drives in various applications, including high capacity music players, personal computers, PDAs and DVRs. Capacities of 3.5-inch drives have hit 400 gigabytes. Several years ago, 400GB would have seemed massive, but the hunger for recording high definition video and the increasing pixel density of digital cameras presents a challenge for the hard drive companies. A 400GB drive stores barely 40 hours of compressed HD video.

Meanwhile, several companies are prepping storage arrays for the home, which include network capability. This sort of NAS appliance would have once been the purview of enterprise IT shops, but now the need for households to have a central repository for their digital media is driving companies to create solutions for homeowners. In addition to massive capacities (up to 1 terabyte), they offer ease of connectivity and setup.