By DAVID E. SANGER Special to The New York Times TOKYO, June 18- When the compact disk emerged from the labora tory as a consumer product in the mid-1980's, recording companies The MD, or mini disk, can record as hated it. It would confuse consumers well as play. and ruin the recording business, they said. Today, records are indeed near extinction, but the recording business has doubled since CD's, with their scratch-free, hiss-free digital clarity, went on sale eight years ago. Now the battle is about to be fought again this time over compact disks that record. The industry is choosing sides over a new technology called MD, for mini disk, a variant of the compact disk that the Sony Corporation is betting will make its own Walkman obsolete. Only two and a half inches in diameter, about the size of soda can tops, the disk is not only made for portables but is also "rewritable," meaning that data stored on it, whether music or digits, can be changed. With that innovation, the one great advantage of tapes over compact disks is about to be wiped away. Sony is not saying yet, but when production of the player-record ers begins next year, they are expected to cost about $400. For a decade, the CD that can record has been one of the Holy Grails of the electronics industry, and Sony is hardly the only entrant. Toshiba, Philips N.V. of the Netherlands, I.B.M., and many others have been building prototypes, and there are already some specialty systems on the market as disk drives for computers -taking advantage of the huge stor age capacity of what the industry calls "optical disks." But Sony is attempting a classic Japanese strategy: It is quickly foreing new, cutting-edge technolgy into a relatively inexpensive consumer. product in hopes that big manufacturing volume will cut production costs and leapfrog the company over the rest of the industry. It is a high-risk approach that in the past has had some broad successes most recently with lightweight consumer video cameras and a few crashing failures. And once again, the recording industry (except for Sony Music) and many of Sony's competitors are protesting vociferously, contending that what is good for the march of technology could prove disastrous for the business. The fate of the MD over the next few years may well determine more than just the profits of the consumer electronics industry. Rewritable disk technology of which the mini disk is just one variation has innumer able uses beyond music. The most important may be in computing, where optical compact disks, known as CDROM's, are already coming into use because they can store far more data than magnetic disks. But unlike mini disks, CD-ROM's cannot record data. A variant of the new mini disk, with its small size, would have obvious ap- The one great plications to laptop computing. For now, Sony says its only im mediate interest is the audio market. "To expand the market for the com pact disk, we needed a much smaller disk that could be used outdoors," said Terusaki Aoki, who heads Sony's development programs. And, of course, we needed recording capabil- So far, small size and recording Now, the race between magnetic and optical technologies is on. The first problem for the optical researchers was to shrink the disks, advantage of tapes over CD's is about to be wiped away. and players, to no more than the size of cassette tapes and Walkmans. Or. dinarily, a mini disk the size of the one Sony developed would store far less data than a standard-size, fiveInch compact disk, which can play about 74 minutes of music. But Sony's new compression technology can jam the same amount of music into a fift the space, partly by cutting out fre quencies that cannot be detected by the human ear. The price: audio qual ity that is a bit lower than on ordinary compact disks. In the future, similar technology may be used to compress the data. For the Scientist, Electronic Notebooks The days of the traditional laboratory notebook may be almost over. As scientists and engineers do more and more of their work on computers, the task of keeping data in a handwritten notebook has become cumbersome and impractical. How can a scientist enter a complex, three-dimensional color model into a notebook? Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston have come up with an electronic alternative, the Virtual Notebook System, or VNS, a software package that turns a computer work station into a multimedia tab notebook that can accept not only text but also sound, electronic mail, photographs and still video images. The software can also receive faxes, allowing data from them to be incorporated into the lab notes. More important, VNS easily ties into a computer network, which makes the lab notebook mobile. A scientist who is traveling can call up the notebook on any work station, regardless of brand. It also allows scientists to share their notebooks with selected colleagues anywhere in the world using any type of computer running the popular X Windows operating system that 1.B.M., Apple, Digital Equipment and others use to control their computers' basic functions. The Virtual Notebook System borrows a key concept from airline reservations systems: a change made by one user is seen immediately by all. According to Kevin Long, a Baylor rescacher and one of the developers of VNS, program users can amend the notes in Texas and colleagues running the program in California, New York or Hong Kong will TB Tom Bloor The notebook program can automatically monitor and collect data from other sources, like a computerized news wire. A researcher can instruct his system to find articles on any subject. · Baylor has created a commercial subsidiary, Groupwork Systems Inc., to sell the notebook program for about $2,500. New Battle i needed for video images, so that videodisks.long a hit product in Japan - will no longer need to be the size of pizza platters. Then there is the jogging problem. While audio tape easily absorbs bouncing and jostling, the delicate laser pickups in portable CD players sometimes skip. In MD machines, special circuitry feeds 3 seconds of music into a one-megabit memory chip before it is played meaning that if the music appears garbled, the machine has time to recover and read it again. "Even if you take the disk out, the music plays on for a few seconds," Mr. Aoki said. The last trick was to design a way to record data without using gobs of electricity, because the MD will be used in battery-operated portables. Some other systems require two lasers-one for erasing data by heating up a spot on the disk to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, one for recording. One-laser systems need several rota. tions of the disk to perform the same job, which takes time. The Sony system, using a single laser, can perform these operations in a single pass over the disk. Philips's Cassette While the technology has been much admired, the MD itself has not. The biggest critic is Philips, Sony's one-time ally in CD's. Next year, around the time that the mini disk appears on the market, Philips is bringing out the digital compact cassette, or DCC. Like digital audio tape, the technology that Sony and other electronics makers here have tried to promote for years, the cassettes have nearly the sound quality of compact disks. But unlike 'digital audio tape or mini disk machines, the new digital cassette players will also play the billlons of conventional cassette tapes that have been sold over the past two decades. Some Fear Industry Ruin Some are already complaining that Sony, by leaving consumers dizzy with yet another incompatible technology, is risking ruin for the industry. Alain Levy, who heads Philips's recording -business, Polygram Records, says Sony "thinks the rest of the world is like Japan" - in love with the compact disk and willing to buy the latest technology. The percentage of the population that owns CD players in gadget-happy Japan is far higher than anyplace else. "We can sell a lot more tapes, and a lot more CD's, without confusing the world with a new format," Mr. Levy said. Among his new allies is Sony's archrival, the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company. The winner will be whichever for mat attracts the most software whether M. C. Hammer and Mozart drift to the Sony camp or the Philips Cony s record en promoting new The New York Times formats is spotty at best. The failure would enable recording pirates to of Betamax to attract good programs make perfect copies of compact ultimately led to its fallure as a video-disks, worked out an electronic procassette format. That shortcoming started Sony on its buying spree in recent years, starting with CBS Records and moving on to Columbia Pictures. Yet even with CBS Records and all Its top-selling titles in hand, Sony was unable to make digital audio tape a success. Last year, when digital audio tape sales were expected to boom, only 150,000 players were sold. The industry, worried that DAT tection plan that satisfied neither consumers nor manufacturers. Sony is now repositioning DAT for music professionals and audiophiles, not for the mass market. The same piracy worries surround the new mini disks. Technologically, the mini disks are superior products: faster, cleaner and more durable than tape. Whether that will be enough to make it a winning product is hardly a sure bet. POPULAR ELECTRONICS ust as we were ready to write off.. digital audio tape (DAT) as a massmarket failure, we were again reminded how difficult it is to predict the future of consumer electronics. After more than a decade of Intra-Industry fighting, the electronics manufacturers, recording companies, songwriters, music publishers, and performers have reached an agreement that could pave the way for DATS entrance as a mass-market Hem. Ironically. DAT may owe its new shot at life to two new com.. peting digital formats. Philips Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) and Sony's Mini Disc (MD), which were introduced earlier this year. : History Repeats? Although most consumers consider DAT to be new technology, that's hardly the case-it was introduced more than five years ago in Japan. Before DAT could be brought to the U.S.. however, threats of lawsuits from the recording Industry forced manufacturers to hold back. When Sony finally did Introduce a DAT deck here In June of last year, they were promptly sued by the National Music Publishers Association. (That sult has been dropped as part of the recent agreement) After a slow start, the DAT format has. finally caught on in Japan. Sales in the U.S. however, have been poor at best. me threat of financial losses brought about by home toping. Universal Studios and Walt Disney Productions sued Sony, alleging copyright infringement in 1976. Although a US. District Court ruled in 1979 that home video taping for private use didn't constitute copyright Infringement, the ruling was reversed by a U.S. Court of Appeals. Congress stepped Into the controversy in 1981. Introducing legislation that would overturn the Appeals Court decision. Later a bill was introduced that would place royalty taxes on VCR's and blank video cassettes. Congress did not act on either bill. In 1982 the US. Supreme Court was petitioned to resolve the home videotaping question. Initial hearings were heard in January 1983, and one year later, the Supreme Court ruled that home video taping does not constitute copynght infringement. Ironically. Hollywood now makes more money from the release of movies on videocassette than it does from theatrical releases! Not a Good Answer? Despite the Supreme Court ruling, the video- and audio-recording industries continued to seek legislation that would impose royalties on cassette decks and VCR's as well as blank tapes. Bills were introduced in Congress that would impose royalties as high as 25% on recorders and at least 1 cent per minute on blank tape! Other alternatives were offered. Including the requirement that antloping chips be built into recording decks. (Studies done on the anti-taping chip by the National Bureau of Stan dards concluded that it was not an ac ceptable solution because it seriously degraded the music quality) The introduction of DAT to the US. at the January 1987 Consumer Electronics Show got the recording industry even more worried, even though no company announced definite sales plans. A bill that would impose a 35% tariff on imported DAT recorders was introduced in Congress, but that also died. Although Congress took no action on any of the bills introduced, the RecordIng Industry Association of America' (RIAA) d:d-they threatened to file a lawsuit against any manufacturer who sold DAT in the US. In an attempt to find out how serious a "problem" home taping was, the Office of Technology Assessment undertook a study ana issued a report. Copyright and Home Taping, in 1989. TV/RADIO MUSICIANS FEATURED ARTISTS MUSIC PUBLISHERS 16.66 AM FED OF MUSICIANS Although the royalty agreement spells out the percentages that each group should receive. we're cynical enough to assume that a good portion of the collected royalties will go to administering the collection and distribution of the funds. Payment to the record companies and artists will be made according to sales. The report concluded that, even though "home taping may reduce the recording industry's revenues, a ban on home audio taping would be even more harmful to consumers and would result in on outright loss of benefits to society... In the billions of dollars." Some of the more interesting findings included: ● Almost three quarters (73%) of home taping occasions do not involve prerecorded music. Instead, they include the taping of family members, lectures, band practices, answering-machine messages, etc. ⚫ Most (72%) home-recorded tapes of copyrighted material were made from the taper's own music collection. Another 9% (for a total of 81%) were made from material owned by other family members. The main reason for the lap ing was "place shifting." That is, home recorders made tapes of CD's so they could be played in a cars cassette player, Walkman, etc. The second most popular reason that home tapers made cassette copies was to make custom topes with only the songs that they wanted. In the order they wanted them. About one quarter of pre-recorded purchases were made after the con-. sumer heard the artist or recording on a home-made tape. (For example, friend said, "Hey, listen to this song from this great new CDI just bought-you just gotta hear II") If home tapers were not able to record, at least three quarters of home tapes would not be replaced by sales of prerecorded music. After the report was issued, boin camps went back into negotiations. The Digital Audio Tape Recorder Act of 1990. Introduced in Congress early in the year, seemed to be the compromise that would finally Tegmmize the digital audio-tape recorder. Both sides realized that it was time to start working together. As the president of the RIAA testified before Congress, "Without our music, their products are worthless, but without their machines, no one can lis ten to our music." The DAT Act called for the inclusion of SCMS, the Serial Copynght Management System, in all digital audio recorders. (See the sidebar elsewhere in this article) The bill, it passed, still did not promise to be a definitive end to the home taping question (despite the Supreme Court's Betamax decision). The dress or affect the legality of private bill in fact, sold, this Act does not adhome copying under the copyright lows. In the eyes of the recording Industry. the bill was a compromise that sought to preserve the status quo by making DAT home laping equivalent to analog home taping-that is, you can only make first generation copies. (Secondgeneration cassette recordings are substantially worse than the preceding generation) The "DAT BIT fumed out not to be the answer we all were waiting for because of opposition from other factions within the music industry. The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA); the Songwriters Guild of America (SGA), and the American Society of Compos. ers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP)who called themselves the "Copyright Coalition-strongly opposed the b!!! |