Digital Camera Outlook 2004

And though Patrican sees similarity in between the rise of CD and DVD, he emphasizes the differences. "We want to educate the retailers on the difference between [recordable] CD and DVD," he said. "The content is going to be more valuable [to the customer]. You can't have a large 30-disc pack, where some might not work, as we've seen with CD. You can't have that with DVD."

To that end, Patrican said that quailty control in manufacturing of DVD recordable formats is going to be key and noted that Maxell has made the decision to keep that manufacturing in Japan rather than sourcing from China.

Another difference from CD that he predicts is the speed/price effect, where as recording speeds rose, prices dropped. He said that such a trend has not been occuring in DVD.