Audio Video News

With the advent of DVD, the death of videotape has been widely predicted. Standard VHS may be going the way of the dinosaur, but tape is re-emerging as a format for high definition movies. Some folks are even predicting that DVD may be relegated to a "mid-fi format."

Four major film studios recently announced their support for JVC's D-Theater format, a subspecies of D-VHS, a technology that extracts unprecedented performance from the VHS cassette. Artisan Entertainment, DreamWorks SKG, Twentieth Century Fox, and Universal Studios have plans to release HD movies later this year.

One digital VHS tape can contain 44GB of data, enough to support four hours of HD content recorded at 28Mbps (megabits per second). This capability exceeds the ATSC technical standard of 19Mbps for digital television. Blank D-VHS cassettes will sell for about $20 each, and should be able to accommodate as many as 50 hours of standard television recording, or four hours of high-def video.

Studio-made D-VHS movies are said to look "twice as good" as their DVD counterparts. Film studios are hoping to capitalize on the fact that there are over two million high-definition video systems in American homes, but precious little true HD programming to watch on them. "There's a need for this . . . D-VHS is in a unique class, different from DVD. This meets the videophile's highest quality expectations for an in-home experience," explained Craig Kornblau, president of Universal Studios Home Video. "It is the only high-def option."

Pre-recorded D-VHS movies will be heavily encrypted to prevent copying, thereby assuaging Hollywood's fears about piracy. D-Theater machines can record HDTV programming—giving consumers the time-shifting capability they have come to take for granted with traditional VCRs—but the digital format does not support the export of recordings over the Internet. "The D-VHS format offers superior picture quality to any other format in existence today, and the solid copyright protection technology built into the D-Theater system makes the format extremely attractive to us as content providers," said Patricia Wyatt, president of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. "Nothing else can reproduce the visual impact of film, and we anticipate that true film enthusiasts will adopt D-Theater now that High-def pre-recorded content will be available." The first JVC-compatible D-VHS films to be released will be in the action/thriller genre and will be priced at $30–$40, the studios said.

JVC is the only company making a high-definition D-VHS machine, which retails for $1500. The electronics giant plans to license its technology to other companies. Mitsubishi also makes an entry-level D-VHS VCR, selling for $1000, but it doesn't support D-Theater encryption, and—shades of the format wars—it reportedly isn't compatible with JVC's deck. A Mitsubishi spokesman said his company believes the public won't go for the D-Theater system.