The CeBIT exhibition held in
Hannover, Germany, is one of the most important
locations to meet the companies we talk about during the year. So as in years
past, CD Freaks made visiting this exhibition a priority.
The CeBIT (German
synonym for 'Center for office
and information technology") accommodates some 6,270 exhibitors with its net
display area of approximately 309,000 square meters. You can expect about 800
000 visitors per year, this is the worlds largest exhibition for information
technology, telecommunications, software and services.
Of course, we were not able to
visit all the companies we would have liked due to time constraints, but we've
picked out the most interesting and started with our walk around this giant
fair, on 10th of March.
Day 1 '“ Thursday 10th march:
After some unexpected delays like a plane delay of 2 hours and some misunderstandings regarding our apartments during the time in Hannover, we were finally able to make our first visit at CeBIT. Unfortunately it was pretty late on that first evening, but we were just in time for the Blu-ray conference!
Blu-Ray conference
The Blu-ray developers first told us they had a surprise for us, so our interest was peaked immediately, what could they mean? Product availability earlier than expected? More storage capacity? Higher speeds?
Well, not really. The news is that Apple joined the Blu-Ray side as supporters of Blu-Ray instead of HD-DVD.
They told us that Blu-ray standalone recorders and readers are already for sale in Japan. So the technology is ready and is working,
They focused on the increased storage capacity of Blu-ray compared to HD-DVD, they believe that the computer and movie industry will soon realize the advantage of having even more storage to play with.
It looks like Philips, LG, Samsung and Sony already have optical pickups ready for use. In addition, other manufacturers are not far behind on developing pickup units.
Right now Blu-ray is aimed at a starting capacity of 50Gb using a double layer disc, but in the future they plan to have 100Gb discs by using 4 layers. And Sony is even experimenting with discs using 8 layers of storage capacity that will yield a whopping 200Gb size.
They also plan to increase the transfer speeds, even all the way up to 8x speed '“ a staggering 288Mbps! We would really like to see the computer and hard drive available to keep up with these high transfer speeds. But let us hope the transfer speeds internally in computers could also improve drastically to achieve these speeds.
Philips does also have a sample PC drive ready and working, although not yet in a finished stage '“ but still working. They showed that Nero and Sonic RecordNow are already working with Blu-ray as well.
Both Verbatim and TDK showed Blu-ray discs. As you probably know, the TDK discs use a special hard coating to overcome scratch problems. We think this technology will most likely be used by all manufacturers of Blu-ray media, simply because the discs will be less expensive to produce without needing a protective cartridge.
There were a lot of people at the conference, so we were unable to ask many questions to dedicated people. Besides that, we were pretty overwhelmed by the amount of information provided at the conference. 😉
One of the questions we were able to ask was the cost and specifically, the manufacturing cost of the discs.
The answer to this was that the cost of the manufacturing was calculated to be around 10% more than for regular DVD media. This is not including the investment cost for installing new Blu-ray manufacturing lines '“ so the discs will most likely be very expensive in the beginning to cover up for the initial capital investments. But after the production lines are installed the actual manufacturing cost was calculated to be about 10% higher than for regular DVD Media.
Well that was everything we were able to do the first day as the fair was closing. Let us continue to day two at next page.
Now listen what the people had to say
Day 2 '“ Friday 11th March:
We arose quite early and were ready for a new and very busy day as we had a lot of appointments to make.
HD-DVD conference:
Today, the first stop on our list was to see what the HD-DVD team had to say at the HD-DVD Conference. The HD DVD team knew how the weather in Germany usually is, as the press release kits included umbrellas. Anyway, let us see what their focus points are.
One of their main focus points is that the price of HD-DVD will be drastically lower as the production lines only need minor changes to be able to manufacture HD-DVD discs. They think that the lower price will attract end users to buy HD-DVD over Blu-ray.
It looks like HD-DVD drives are close to being ready, but unlike Blu-Ray most of the drives will be read only, not writers. Also unlike Blu-ray, which is already selling in Japan, the HD-DVD drives are not yet for sale.
Another focus point is that there will be close to 100 HD-DVD movie titles released by the end of the year, which shows great support in the movie industry.
The image above shows the NEC PC drive press sample, which is a read only unit. There was also a large amount of HD-DVD pre-release discs shown, this image only shows about half the discs that were on display. This is most likely due to the fact as we mentioned earlier, that manufacturing HD-DVD only requires minor changes in the production lines '“ while Blu-ray requires new manufacturing equipment.
That was all we had from the HD-DVD press conference.
Lite-On:
The next point on our list was a meeting with Lite-On. We took a few pictures of their latest products.
Their latest DVD-Writer is the SOHW-1693S which features 16x DVD+/-R and 4x DVD+/-R DL as well as 6x DVD-RW and 8x DVD+RW.
Their latest slim external drive is the SOSW-833SX, the specifications is clearly visible on the picture.
The latest external Lite-On drive (16x DVD+/-R and 4x DVD+R DL as well as 6x DVD-RW and 8x DVD+RW) along with the latest CD-Writer SOHR-5238S and combo drive SOHC-5235K. There was also a HP LightScribe drive shown, as well as an HP representative available at the Lite-On stand.
Lite-On did also display some nice stand-alone DVD-Players and DVD-Recorders. And among them was this device, which also supports DVD+R Double layer media.
We asked Lite-On some questions of course.
The first was why don't they have a Lite-On branded LightScribe drive yet '“ since they manufacture the lightscribe drive for HP? Well, the reason for this was very simple, HP and Lite-On have made a deal where Lite-On manufactures the LightScribe drive (and all other HP branded optical drives!) for HP '“ but that Lite-On is not allowed to sell this drive under their own brand before November 2005. Due to price of course as the HP branded drive cost slightly more than a Lite-On drive would.
We did also ask them if there were plans to improve the specifications of the HP LightScribe drive (which is only 2.4x DVD+R Double Layer speed and 8x DVD-R), but these specs was in an agreement with HP, so there were no plans to increase performance by firmware upgrade.
OptoDisc:
On our way to another appointment we dropped by the OptoDisc stand to look at their latest products.
OptoDisc plans to start manufacturing Blu-ray discs in Q2 2006 according to our information, so the discs shown here are probably promo discs.
And they did also show HD-DVD promo discs, no information on availability.
5x DVD-RAM discs were on display, as well as 16x DVD+R and DVD-R discs. But no double layer discs, which was quite surprising to us. We asked them and they said the market demand was not big enough for investing money in production lines for double layer discs.
NEC:
We hurried over to NEC to get a look of their products.
NEC displayed their latest writers, ND-3540 and ND-6650A. ND-3540 supports 16x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW as well as 8x DVD+R DL and 4x DVD-R DL. The CD-Writing speed is 48x and CD-RW writing speed is 32x.
ND-6650A supports 8x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW and 4x DVD+/-R DL.
Both these drives are expected to be shipping in late April or early May.
NEC is one of the HD-DVD supporters and displayed HD-DVD media……
….as well as an HD-DVD reader. This should be available in September this year. The HD-DVD PC-drive (read only) should be available for 99 EUR.
We asked NEC about the benefits of HD-DVD. They told us that the price was the main consideration . They also believe that Blu-ray was very difficult to implement into slim laptop drives because of the fact that the lens has to be very close to the disc. They felt it might be too easy for the lens to hit the disc and damage disc/drive. We will see in the future if the Blu-ray team could find a good solution for this.
Another problem with Blu-ray at the moment according to NEC, is that Blu-ray discs written with one drive brand could only be read back by drives of the same brand. So a Sony written disc will not work in a Thomson drive for example. We made a note of this so we would remember to ask Benq about it.
Some other questions that we asked on request from you:
Will ND-3500AG support DVD-R DL?
There are no plans to add DVD-R DL to the ND-3500AG at the moment.
Will NEC drives support PI/PO testing?
The tales persons we discussed it with did honestly not know. But as you see, it may look like it '“ just check latest CD/DVD-Speed news 😉
BenQ:
The next company on our list was BenQ.
BenQ's latest and greatest DVD-Writer, the DW-1640A. Specifications of this drive is 16x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 4x DVD+R DL, 48x CD-R and 32x CD-RW.
Expected to be shipping late April.
They also show their DW-1625A LightScribe drive with, 16x DVD+R, 8x DVD-R, 2.4x DVD+R DL, 4x DVD+/-RW, 40x CD-R and 24x CD-RW writing speeds.
The optical pickup unit developed for both, Blu-ray and CD/DVD reading/writing as well as Blu-ray media.
The BenQ Blu-ray writer, even though it's not a finished product, it is at least working and BenQ took the time to give us a demonstration.
The compilation is made, but since the product is not finished yet they had to use the small tool in the right corner to tell that the disc they would insert was a Blu-ray disc.
Well, it works! At the moment just at 1x speed but the plan is to release the drive as a 2x speed Blu-ray recorder.
And the disc was created successfully.
Now the disc was put into this standalone recorder to see if it plays back.
And it plays back with no problems.
So it seems like Blu-ray is getting close to becoming a finished product.
But then we asked BenQ about the compatibility problems that NEC told us about, and they had to admit that there were still compatibility problems between different brands. But they promised that this should be corrected before the end of the year.
We spoke about the future of BenQ as well, BenQ is very end user minded as they actively use user feedback and read forums to see the customer opinions on their products. They do often read our own forums as well.
The plan for BenQ was to develop more easy to use programs to include with their consumer products, and in this way take market shares from other brands. BenQ as a brand name is growing well at the moment, but they are still a very large OEM manufacturer.
As for the DW1625A they do not plan to improve the current specifications of the drive. But they did say that there may be new drives with LightScribe support and better performance later on.
Plextor:
We did of course not forget Plextor. This is what they had to show us.
Plextor PX-716A/716SA is already well known on the market. So let us take a look at other products.
The Plextor PX-716AL slot loader is very interesting because it's also compatible with 8 cm media, which is very uncommon for slot loaders. It also features a unique method of only grabbing the sides of the disc so there will be no dust etc., on the top and bottom of the disc. This is of course important for error free recording.
The bad news is that Plextor is not sure if this model will be available for sale in Europe. Let's try to push them to start selling this model in Europe as well! The drive will soon be available in Asia and USA.
Plextor will also provide floppy drives, flash memory products and several other products made by their new partner I-O Data.
And that also includes standalone players supporting various file formats.
We asked Plextor about their new Plextools XL, we feel the price they charge is a bit high. But they promised to add several new features to the program making it really worth the money.
We did also fear that they would stop providing plextools with their drives, but luckily '“ that is not the case. They will still include the regular plextools version with every drive sold in Europe.
We did also ask them why Plextools do not support disc quality checking at higher speeds than 2x. According to our tales man they had tested 4x speed as well '“ but due to fear of inconsistent results they decided not to enable it.
We asked him about the writing quality at 16x speed, since it can't keep up with other drives quality wise.
He said it depends on the media, as well as promising better media compatibility in next firmware. We pushed him harder and then he said 'every manufacturer tries to get the best quality out of the components and chipset they use".
So we asked him if Plextor used components of too low quality since they could not obtain the same writing quality at 16x speed as their competitors. Again he promised further improvements with next firmware. But we will have to wait and see if they could deliver real 16x speed (with that we mean 'without the need to disable PowerREC to reach 16x") with all 16x media.
Plextor have not yet decided what to do for HD-DVD and Blu-ray.
AOpen:
The last thing we did this day was to stop at the AOpen stand
AOpen still have a complete selection of optical drives; Combo drives, CD-Writers and DVD-Writers.
The latest internal DVD-Writer; DUW1616/ARR. Specifications; 16x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 4x DVD-RW, Double layer support, 48x CD-Writing speed and 32x CD-RW speed.
Now our feet were really beginning to get sore after running around the whole day, so thank goodness the show was over for this for the evening.
Day 3 '“ Saturday 12th March:
Looking forward to a (hopefully) bit less busy day, we headed for the show. Since our first appointment was later on the day, we had some time to look around and visit other companies.
New Medium Enterprises:
We stumbled on a company called New Medium Enterprises, claiming to have 20Gb discs using the technology already available today.
After closer inspection we found out that they achieved 20Gb by adding two more layers to a disc, which means a total of 4 layers. They claim it works with today's technology, but that is only partially true, as the technology requires a new chip for controlling the laser to focus on each layer. They plan to increase capacity all the way up to 40Gb and maybe even 50Gb by simply adding more and more layers to the disc.
Because of the fact that their chipset is under development was there no working drive available, but they have shown us how it works by using a emulation program on their computer . Time will tell if this project becomes popular, if all current readers would have been able to read the discs '“ then sure, but as long as that is not the case… well, we have our doubts.
Prodisc:
Prodisc showed their HD-DVD-R and HD-DVD-RW discs, shipping time and price is yet to be announced.
Prodisc was promoting Blu-ray by showing a BD-R disc. But they admitted that the disc was not a real BD-R disc. Production of BD-R and BD-RE discs was expected to begin summer 2006 according to the tales man from Prodisc. Price is still not known, but estimated price was close to three times higher than DVD media.
They did also show double layer media for both formats, ready to be shipped, and of course a full line of 16x/8x/4x DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW and CD-R/RW products.
CMC Magnetics:
We did of course drop by CMC Magnetics, which is one of the larger manufacturers of media. Unfortunately, they did not have any information on HD-DVD or Blu-ray yet.
But they had quite a few discs of various formats and sizes on display. 16x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 5x DVD-RAM and others.
Artec:
We do not have much to say for Artec, this is the most interesting thing we saw, a small sign stating 'DVD Dual, 16x DL". And the drives on each side of the sign are actually just combo drives '“ not DVD-Writers at all. We were not able to find the specifications so we ran to find someone to tell us about the specifications of the drives.
But the person was not interested in showing us the optical products, only all the other computer products. When we asked him why, he said that Artec did not focus on optical drive anymore due to low profit in the optical drive market.
MAM-E:
Manufacturing Advanced Media Europe has bought the rights to use the Kodak brand name for their media. They will also re-introduce the real Kodak Gold CD-R media.
Kodak DVD Media will be available in both 4x and 8x speed variants.
MAM-E manufactures media of a lot of different types, with a variety of printable surfaces as well.
KiSS Technology:
We had a really long meeting with Kiss and confronted them with some of the questions raised at our forum. Let us start with the Q & A session first.
Q: When will Kiss stop releasing unfinished products?
A: You will in the future see better products released, but there may still be minor issues that need improving by firmware upgrade. And we do admit that our products have not been as good as we wish.
Q: Why do Kiss products not support DVD+R DL discs?
A: We are aware of this issue and hope our engineers could find a solution that we will provide as a firmware upgrade.
Q: When will nero digital be supported by DP-558?
A: It is supported with firmware 1.1.2 which will be released shortly.
Q: Will there be firmware updates available for older players to fix various reported bugs?
A: All players from DP-450 and up will have a new firmware within the middle of May to fix almost every issue reported.
Q: When will the plasma TV's be available? They have been announced for two years already.
A: They will be available in limited quantities from August/September this year using a 6th generation panel from LG.
Q: Why is the DP-6xx series not released yet?
A: As some of your questions show we have released some unfinished products on the market earlier and will avoid that. Now we focus on getting the product finished before releasing it, we did also redesign the chassis, which took some time as well. But the drive is finally ready for a middle of May release.
Let us take a look at the KiSS DP-600, which is the main focus point of KiSS Technology:
- Plays DVD, WMv9, DivX, MPEG-4, Nero Digital, MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Jpeg pictures.
- Video On Demand: All you need is a PC and an Internet connection and you could pay a small sum to watch Video On Demand videos on the KiSS DP-600.
- Ethernet and wireless connection.
- KiSS Online; listen to radio, play games, watch TV guide or check the weather in your area online.
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| Interview Kiss (high quality) 29MB |
Interview Kiss (low quality) 3.5MB
LG Electronics:
Of course we couldn't forget to visit LG, this is what they had to show us:
The external LG GSA-5167D, 16x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6X DVD-RW, 8x DVD+R DL, 4x DVD-R DL, 5x DVD-RAM as well as 48x CD-R and 32X CD-RW. Add LightScribe and this one looks like a real winner!
The already well known LG GSA-5163D and GSA-4163B: 16x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6X DVD-RW, 4x DVD+R DL, 5x DVD-RAM as well as 40x CD-R and 24X CD-RW.
They also had on display various combo drives and slim drives of course.
DVD-RAM Promotion stand:
We came upon the DVD-RAM promotion stand almost by accident, but used this opportunity to take some images of various drives '“ all supporting DVD-RAM. Unfortunately '“ the specifications were lacking for most of them. Anyway, we have some pictures at least.
Panasonic SW-9585, 16x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 5x DVD-RAM as well as DVD+/-R DL. No more information available.
And some more Panasonic drives
Never heard about it, but here is a pixela corporation firewire drive for Macintosh.
Another unknown drive from Buffalo.
And one from I-O Data as well.
Starforce:
For the first time this year we noticed on the exhibitor list Starforce, the famous russian copy protection company, so we decided to pay them a visit :
Safe'n'Sec is Starforce's new IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) for Windows 2000/XP based systems, which intercepts all accesses to the hard drive and compares them to a given set of rules. Any attempt by a program to modify files or windows registry in a suspicious way will be blocked. Although this is not a new idea, the explanations made sense and the demo seemed to work ; more details and a trial version are available on their website.
Starforce is most well known for its "Professional 3.0" copy protection system, which is often discussed on our forums (which they seem to read regularly). We discussed about the recent advances in Starforce emulation (Starfuck, StarforceNightmare), but they don't seem to worry much about them. They consider that these tools are only useful to a few experts, and that they are anyway made obsolete at each new Starforce version. So for now they keep updating each new version and don't plan a version 4.0.
Then this day was over as well. With sore feet again, we quickly went to get some rest…
Day 4 '“ Sunday 13th March:
Our last day at CeBIT 2005 and with few meetings, we basically had some more time to explore. But let us start with the meeting we had with Samsung.
Samsung electronics:
Samsung electronics proudly showed their latest products. Especially the Blu-ray drives.
The BD-R1000 is a very nice designed product, and in finalized, working version.
Samsung was then kind enough to demonstrate this new drive for us. The BD disc uses a cartridge, but it is easy to open, so there are no problems with removing the disc from the cartridge.
The Samsung Blu-ray half-height PC drive. A working sample he claimed, but they were not yet able to demonstrate it. They do Expect the drive to hit the market early in 2006.
They also have a full range of DVD-Writers. The specifications of the latest SH-W162C and SE-W164A is 16x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW and 5x DVD+R DL and 4x DVD-R DL.
We had a very long conversation with Samsung, and the guys were very nice to us and honestly interested on feedback on their products.
Let us do a short Q & A session.
Q: Why not combine Toshiba and Samsung drives now that they have joined each other in the TSST group?
A: Due to demand for both drive brands we will continue with both. Toshiba have a good OEM brand '“ so we will continue to make them.
Q: Why not use Toshiba chipset in the Samsung drives?
A: The production volume limit on the Toshiba chipset is 100.000 per month, which is too little, and thus we picked Mediatek for the latest Samsung branded drives.
Q: Why is the writing quality with Samsung products not as good as with many other drives?
A: Really? To our experience the writing quality is quite good with known brand discs. But we will continue to improve the firmware.
Q: You support Blu-ray and Toshiba supports HD-DVD, could you tell us a bit about this?
A: We think we both learn from this, maybe we will even see drives and chipsets combining both Blu-ray and HD-DVD in the future. But that is too early to say yet.
Q: Will your drives support bitsetting?
A: Yes, we hope to implement this by firmware update.
He also told us that they are looking into adding DVD-RAM support to the next drive to be developed. And that Samsungs goal was to be the best, period.
Ritek / Conrexx:
Next on our list was to visit Ritek to take some photos.
They did of course display 16x DVD+/-R media as well as 4x double layer media and the usual stuff that everybody shows. But Ritek have other products as well, let us take a look on a few of those.
Ritek do also have Flash memory of various types.
And like most others they did display HD-DVD products. But then we suddenly heard a damn lot of noise and ran to find out what it was…
E-Net distribution:
It was a man at the E-Net stand playing on a bag pipe, which caused people to come running from everywhere, just to see where the loud noise came from.
E-Net is very large in Europe and owns brands like Datawrite, Datasafe, Bulkpaq, Budget, Rivision and Ridisc as shown here.
And here is some of the later additions to their list of brands, Tuff disc claims to be more scratch resistant than other media.
Gigabyte:
We did a quick visit at Gigabyte, they do not focus much on optical drives '“ but we found a CD-Writer and DVD-Writer. Both are really Lite-On OEM drives and the DVD-Writer seems to be an OEM SOHW-1673S.
MSI:
We did the same for MSI, just a quick look. Their DVD-Writers seems to be OEM BenQ drives, the latest one is an OEM DW1640.
Summary:
This year we did miss some companies at CeBIT, for example Philips, Pioneer and Verbatim did not have a stand at CeBIT. And for the optical drive world there was no big news, Blu-ray and HD-DVD are still not 100% finished and 16x DVD-Writers have been around for a while already.
Yet one of the main benefits for us as an optical drive information and news site is that we are able to visit so many companies and strengthen our relationship with them during the visit at CeBIT.
Now the journey home started and after plane delays for some of us and heavy rain for others, we finally came home in good condition. Although tired and with aching feet after walking for miles to see the show.
