The show was held from Feb. 18-21 at Makuhari Messe, Chiba, near Tokyo.
It is the first time that a Mac-based DVD-RAM drive appeared at the show.
The company replayed a DVD-RAM disk QuickTime movie on the PowerMac 7600/166 during its demo. (See
chart)
Apple Japan Inc.'s Mac OS 8.1 announced in the beginning of February supports DVD-ROMs, but not DVD-RAMs. The DVD-RAM
disk in the demonstration was in the HFS format, not in the universal disk format (UDF), and was running on driver
software called "B's Crew." The HFS is a Mac standard format.
In addition, the currently used MPEG2 decoder board decodes data first and overlays it to the display by analog signals.
Under this method, the display in full screen size deteriorates. To avoid this, Matsushita Industrial, in cooperation
with ATI Technologies Inc., is developing a board capable of displaying digital information in full screen size.
Shipments will be in the middle of 1998, and the format will be changed into the UDF disk format. It will need dedicated
driver software, but the company was not clear about whether the software will be bundled or not.
The price is expected to be around 100,000 yen (US$780).
|
Chart: DVD-RAM drive "LF-D100"
|
|
|
(return to news)
Related story: Japanese Mac OS 8.1,
CPU Upgrade Cards at MacWorld Tokyo
(Nikkei MAC)
|
