Universal drives to take two-thirds of $2B high-definition DVD drive market in 2012
(Business News, 02 Jan 2008 )
The adoption of high definition optical drives by personal computer manufacturers and consumers is only just beginning. Nonetheless both Sony (with its Blu-ray format) and Toshiba (HD DVD format) have announced their intentions to include high definition DVD drives in all their machines.
According to ABI Research, high-definition drives will bring in revenues of about $2 billion by 2012. Steve Wilson, principal analyst, said that two-thirds of the said value will be accounted for by universal drives, which can play either format—Blu-ray or HD-DVD. "Few universal drives are sold today, partly because of their higher price. But those prices will fall to about the same as Blu-ray players by 2009, and we forecast universal player sales to exceed Blu-ray the following year," said Wilson.
The amount of data that must be processed for smooth presentation of high-definition video on the computer far exceeds that of a standard DVD, so extra graphics processing power is needed. At its most recent Developers Forum, Intel recommended the use of dedicated HD accelerator chips made by Broadcom. However, Wilson said that as with most new functions that originally require discrete processors, high-definition video processing will gradually be integrated with existing graphics chipsets, negating the need for a separate accelerator. "Both Intel and AMD have integrated HD support in their roadmaps for 2008. So the market opportunity for standalone HD processors will be limited and short-lived," added Wilson.
ABI Research's data shows that about 30 percent of consumers use DVDs for data storage. However the adequate 4GB/disk capacity of conventional DVD-Rs and the steep cost per gigabyte of high-definition disks will limit consumer demand for HD as a storage medium.
