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21 Gun
Salute The Digital Versatile Disc format, better known as DVD, has come a long way in the less-than five years since it was "officially" introduced in Japan on December 8, 1995. That day marked the joining of forces of the SD and MMCD camps, with the single goal of launching and supporting DVD, the next generation of optical media. DVD has been a boon to the media manufacturing business, particularly those optical media replicators who have committed to manufacturing DVDs. It is estimated that more than 200 million DVDs were manufactured worldwide in 1999, generating many millions of dollars in revenue for the media manufacturing industry. Considering DVD's effect on the media manufacturing industry, TapeDisc Business and sister publication DVD Report decided to recognize those executives who helped get DVD off the ground. The goal was to identify a cross-section of DVD executives from technical innovators, to key business people; from equipment and service providers, to content owners and retailers. Certainly, limiting the number executives to 21 was the most difficult part of the effort, as so many people have played valuable roles in establishing DVD. The final selections, who are identified on the following pages, were based on input from a variety of industry executives with whom TapeDisc Business and DVD Report spoke. [Editor's Note: Names are listed alphabetically] GARY ARNOLD Once DVD made it out of the laboratory and into the market, support at the retail level was crucial. A number of national and regional retailers including Tower Video, Musicland Stores, and Trans World Entertainment were committed to the format from day one, but Best Buy was the early adopter's best friend. DVD-Video titles were carried from launch in 74 of the company's stores, and sales grew to about 30,000 units per month even before the national roll-out. By April 1998, Best Buy was moving 45,000 software units a week, and grossing $1 million. Under Arnold's direction, hundreds of Best Buy stores cross-promoted DVD-Video hardware and movie titles, emphasizing both selection and price, and helping legitimize the format in the minds of purchasers of consumer electronics. ALEX BALKANSKI Raised in Paris and a graduate of Harvard University, Balkanski teamed with entrepreneur Dr. Edmund Sun to co-found C-Cube Microsystems in 1988. Balkanski and Sun did much of the pioneering work in developing the MPEG algorithm and the MPEG chip crucial to MPEG encoding. Sun left C-Cube in 1993 to start Digital Video Systems (now a C-Cube customer), leaving Balkanski to develop the market for compressing full-motion digital video, enabling the playback of video from optical media as we know it today. Dr. ALAN BELL Bell played a critical role in helping to settle the "SD versus MMCD" format war that threatened next-generation CD in the pre-DVD days. Behind the urging of executives such as Bell, the two camps joined forces in late 1995 to concentrate on the effort of supporting a single, unified new format launch, known as "DVD." Bell's work was far from done, however. The next task was to help settle copy protection issues that threatened to doom DVD before it was even launched. Bell chaired the DVD Forum's Copy Protection Technical Working Group, in which his primary task was to work as an intermediary among the DVD Forum members, Hollywood and the computer industry to solve the touchy issue of best protecting intellectual property. GREG BERKIN Admittedly, DVD-ROM has had its difficulties getting off the ground, despite the efforts of executives such as Intel DVD evangelist Greg Berkin. Intel and Berkin have made compatibility between DVD-ROM software and drives their number one priority. Behind Intel's support, Berkin has conducted numerous Plug & Play Fests so as to insure compatibility with different PC Platforms. Intel has also helped support would-be developers and publishers of DVD-ROM titles. When DVD-ROM takes off and it is only a matter of time it will be much to the credit of Intel and Berkin. TODD COLLART It took a while for Hollywood studios, accustomed to absolutely linear systems of creation and distribution, to become comfortable with the interactivity of DVD-Video. That was a baby step, however, compared to the leap into the more open-ended DVD-ROM environment. Fortunately, InterActual Technologies has provided a sense of stability on the PC platform. Early titles, notably New Line's Lost In Space, repurposed existing interactive content for DVD-ROM and tentatively explored avenues for creating community and collecting revenue via the Internet. More sophisticated follow-ups, like Ronin and The Matrix (DVD's first million-selling blockbuster), used InterActual's PCFriendly software to build sophisticated events allowing audiences and filmmakers to hook up online. Through it all, Collart himself has remained a mainstay of meetings and conferences, traveling the world over to evangelize the Web-connected DVD. MICHAEL DUBELKO DVD and the Internet a match made in heaven. Studios were initially reluctant to sell product directly to online retailers, a position that they've since abandoned. DVD Express founder Michael Dubelko helped make it happen. Launched in April 1997, DVD Express offered a wide selection of DVD titles (including DVD-ROM) at attractive discounts, with a plethora of delivery options. Little more than a year later, the company was among the top 20 most active e-commerce sites, with 1998 revenues in excess of $16 million. Dubelko added videogames to the mix early on, a strategy that recently crystallized with a $500 million merger between DVD Express and Maximum Holdings, a creator of online videogame portals and e-commerce sites. The company has now begun selling music, and will soon change its name to simply Express.com, but it's an online empire that was built on DVD. DR. JONATHAN HALLIDAY Dr. Halliday joined Nimbus in 1981 when the UK-based company was principally an LP manufacturer, and helped transform the company into one of the first and largest independent CD manufacturers of the 1980s. Behind the support of Nimbus founder Numa Labinsky, Halliday was charged with the task in 1992 of designing and building a system that would help migrate CD from an audio carrier into a video carrier. Halliday succeeded, and his invention was unveiled at Midem, the music industry's most important exhibition, in January 1993. In the summer of 1994, Nimbus was commissioned by Time Warner and Toshiba to design and build a mastering system, and to be part of a core development team to prove such a disc could be manufactured at an acceptable price. WAMO took delivery of the first (outside Japan) Nimbus DVD mastering system in January 1995. With Halliday's system in tow, WAMO set about proving to Time-Warner's decision makers that DVDs could indeed be mastered and manufactured cost-effectively. KOJI HASE Hase, along with Warner Home Video's Warren Lieberfarb, are sometimes referred to as the "Fathers of DVD" for their early evangelizing work for the format. An attorney by trade, Hase initially served as general manager of Toshiba's Super Disc (SD) division, the precursor to DVD. Behind the push of then Toshiba president Taizo Nishimuro and Hase, Toshiba began pushing the idea of putting movies on SD in the early 1990s, working closely with companies such as Time Warner to prove SD could achieve what it promised. When it became clear that the Toshiba-led SD contingent and Sony/Philips MMCD where headed for an all-out format war, Hase was one of the key players involved in melding SD and MMCD into a single format namely, DVD. From there, he helped establish the DVD Consortium (later to be renamed the DVD Forum), for which he continues to serve as Chairman. DAVID KAWAKAMI These days, Kawakami is busy supporting Sony/Philips' recently launched Super Audio CD format which, for all intents and purposes, competes with the DVD-Audio format. (For the record, Sony is attempting to walk a fine-line between its support of both next-generation audio formats, although, to date, its support would seem to favor the SACD side.) But in the pre-SACD days, it was Sony executives such as Kawakami and eventually Mike Fidler (who would move over from Pioneer) who preached the potential of DVD at trade shows and events ranging from DVD Forum meetings to audio- and video-specific events. Sony was one of DVD's biggest supporters from the early days, marketing arguably the most respected line of DVD-Video players, supporting the format with an early lineup of movies from its Columbia TriStar studio, and most recently, committing its next-generation videogame system, PlayStation 2, to play DVD-based videogames and movies. WARREN LIEBERFARB As mentioned earlier, Lieberfarb and Toshiba's Koji Hase are referred to as the "Fathers of DVD" for the early work in establishing the format. Lieberfarb has continued his role as one of DVD's most vociferous backers, particularly on the DVD-Video front. Warner Home Video was the first major Hollywood studio to pledge its support to the DVD-Video format with a significant number of 'A' titles. Lieberfarb was also instrumental in helping to get commitments from other Hollywood studios, such as MGM and New Line. For good or bad depending on your perspective Lieberfarb made it his personal vendetta to keep pay-per-use DVD format Divx from succeeding. Warner Home Video and other studios committed millions of dollars to marketing efforts that both competed with Divx, and brought more value to consumers (such as DVD rental promotions). RICK MARQUARDT JR. A fourth-generation media manufacturer, Marquardt made the technology behind the ideas of Lieberfarb and Hase's "movie on a single high-density optical disc" come to life. Lieberfarb first came to visit Marquardt at the WEA/Specialty Records facility in Olyphant, PA, in 1994 to talk about manufacturing the SD format. A new organization at WEA - dubbed Warner Advanced Media Operations (WAMO) was formed to make the SD, which became DVD a year later. Marquardt has since kept WAMO on the cutting edge of DVD replication, launching the first mass-manufacturing of DVD-18 (dual-sided, dual-layer) in third quarter 1999. By third quarter 2000, WAMO expects to have a worldwide capacity of 1 million DVDs a day thanks to its Affiliate Program. MICHAEL MULVIHILL Under Mulvihill's supervision New Line's titles have been among the best in the business, for both image quality and extra features. The feature-packed Austin Powers was arguably DVD-Video's first killer app, the early bestseller that called the tune for the rest of the industry. The release of Lost In Space, for which Mulvihill helped drum up press coverage by demonstrating it in both California and New York, was a landmark for DVD-ROM functionality and a runaway bestseller. Since then, the company has released a handful of titles that use branching to play back different versions of movies, pioneering a little-used feature. Most significantly, New Line gives less commercial titles, both arthouse favorites and B-level erotic thrillers, similar lavish treatment. Remarkably, the company does it all without budging from the $24.95 price point established at launch, making the discs equally friendly to filmmakers and consumers. JAN OOSTERVELD Just as it was one of the innovators of Compact Disc (CD) technology, Philips has played an important role in the development of the DVD industry. It holds key patents for DVD hardware and disc manufacturing technology. It has swayed somewhat from the DVD 'team effort' in the last few years, as one of the companies supporting technologies (including DVD+RW and SACD) that could be considered potentially competitive with those supported by the DVD Forum. Still, it cannot take away from its support and development of DVD technology in the format's early days. Leading the Philips effort was Jan Oosterveld, then director of the Philips Key Modules division (Oosterveld has since been promoted to senior director of corporate strategy, and was recently appointed as a member of the Group Management Committee of Philips.) Oosterveld, who studied mechanical engineering and factory automation at Eindhoven Technical University, spoke at many of the earliest DVD meetings and conferences. ANDY PARSONS When the landscape is as rocky and perilous as that of recordable and rewritable DVD, it's a relief to be able to put a human face to the technology. On behalf of Pioneer New Media Technologies, which has single-handedly marketed the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats for authoring and video recording applications, Andy Parsons has been a staunch representative of the cutting-edge equipment. Whether it means banging the drum for new products or checking out compatibility problems, Parsons remains an accessible resource for an industry coming to terms with writable DVD, and a diplomat keeping communication lines open between engineers and end-users. BOB PFANNKUCH Pfannkuch, a veteran of the VHS duplication industry, was a relative late-comer to the DVD business. Matsushita lured Pfannkuch out of retirement in 1997 to run its start-up DVD facility in Torrance, CA. But Pfannkuch quickly made up for lost time. PDSC became the first DVD-only replication facility, and one of the leading replicators of the DVD-9 format. Based on his relationships with Hollywood executives from his VHS days, Pfannkuch played a key role in "selling" the DVD-Video format to studios initially sitting on the DVD sidelines. Like WAMO, PDSC has also been instrumental in driving DVD replication technology, including development of the Burst-Cutting Area (BCA), which can be used in Web-connected DVDs. Pfannkuch has had plenty of support at PDSC, too: Dr. Michiyoshi Nagashima, chief technical officer, drove much of the early research into dual-layer DVD development; and Ram Reddy Nomula and Harvey Mabry are two well-known industry veterans who have helped drive DVD both process and market-wise. JERRY PIERCE "DVD is going to be the best thing we've seen in a long time," Jerry Pierce told DV magazine back in October 1996, half a year before most of the world had a chance to lay hands on an actual movie title. As director of the Digital Video Compression Center at Universal Studios, Pierce was charged with building a world-class digital video authoring facility basically from scratch, since the rules had yet to be written on how to encode MPEG-2 video, and how it could best be authored to DVD. Today, the center's clients include Universal, Paramount and Fox, among others, indicating that he got it right. Pierce also co-chaired the data hiding subgroup of the copy protection technical working group, where important work was done in the still-unresolved arena of watermarking technologies. MARY SAUER The authoring/premastering tools segment is perhaps the most difficult to select but one executive/company. Certainly, Daikin's Dr. Panos Nasiopoulos deserves mention, as do the crews at Minerva and Spruce. But we consider the work of Mary Sauer to rate highest. Sauer is the leading figure in Sonic Solutions' effort to evangelize the DVD authoring and premastering side of the business, which also included Sonic Solutions CEO Bob Doris (who doubles as Sauer's husband) and Mark Ely. Sonic Solutions began working hand-in-hand with leading production houses such as Abbey Road, Warner Bros. and The Enterprise back in 1997 to develop its contingent of authoring and premastering tools, including DVD Creator, the industry's first all-in-one DVD production system. Sauer also shows that women can play key roles in what has unfortunately become a male-dominated business. RICHARD SHARP To many DVD supporters, he was public enemy number one. Divx, the pay-per-use DVD system that he championed, suffered an ignominious defeat last June, when Circuit City pulled the plug on its $300 million investment in the format. Still, Circuit City CEO Richard Sharp played a defining role in the evolution of DVD, if only because so much power and energy was expended to ensure that he couldn't succeed. Divx, with its groundbreaking conditional-access technology, was intended as nothing less than a reinvention of the video rental marketplace. The late-1997 Divx announcement mobilized the industry to kick-start the DVD rental market and keep retail prices for DVD titles at rock-bottom. (Is it mere coincidence that, once Divx perished, Warner Home Video abruptly discontinued its line of $14.95 budget DVD titles?) Certainly Divx had an impressive technical pedigree, and the speed at which Divx titles were cranked out meant that the DVD premastering and replication markets got a huge shot in the arm from the upstart format. There were others behind the scenes who helped make Divx happen, including Digital Video Express president Paul Brindze, technology consultant Geoff Tully, and the company's stoic, oft-quoted public face, Josh Dare. But Sharp was the one who bore the brunt of public criticism, taking it on the chin again and again. He steps down from his office at Circuit City in June, no doubt due in part to the ultimate failure of Divx. But his dogged support of the format helped give the DVD industry the drive and sense of purpose that it needed. Dr. GREGOR STRASSER, Strasser is an example of one of the many people driving the pre-recorded and writable DVD industry from 'behind-the-scenes.' One of the critical process issues in manufacturing DVDs in particular, dual-layer DVD-9s is thin film production. Strasser and BPS have been on the cutting edge of this technology, particularly with regard to DVD-9. The company has been working on systems and process technology that allow for the substituting of new disc-coating materials (such as silver and aluminum) in place of the obviously expensive gold. Strasser, who holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Innsbruck, has been overseeing BPS' optical storage division for the last five years. He is also a frequent speaker at DVD-related industry events, such as REPLItech. HIROAKI "BIKE" SUZUKI As chairman of WG-4, the DVD Forum's working group on DVD-Audio, Bike Suzuki has presided over as much turmoil and controversy as anyone in the industry. As the leader of acoustic research for JVC, Suzuki was a natural to help shepherd the DVD-Audio spec to market, a process that edges ever closer to completion. It's been a long time coming, but DVD-Audio finally looks to be in good shape for a launch later this year, with a specification that even offers a small degree of compatibility with the installed base of DVD-Video players. For audiophiles, WG-4 selected the Meridian Lossless Packing compression scheme proposed by Bob Stuart of Meridian Audio, which allows high-resolution multichannel sound at reduced data rates with no compromise in fidelity to the original data. Despite various objections to the process and, at one point, threats of litigation Suzuki kept the ball rolling toward completion of the very complicated and functional audio specifications. JIM TAYLOR Taylor wrote the book on DVD, literally. His DVD Demystified was written on assignment for McGraw-Hill when the publisher contacted him after seeing the exhaustive DVD FAQ (frequently asked questions) list he maintained online. The title remains surprisingly current despite the 1997 publication date. It wasn't only book publishers who took notice Taylor was tapped by Microsoft as the software giant's evangelist for DVD on DirectShow-equipped PCs. An exhaustive repository of information on all things DVD, Taylor has brought technical information to not just the industry, appearing at nearly every DVD-related event on tap, but to consumers as well, as a regular contributor to videophile mag Widescreen Review. A second edition of the book is due later this year, but you can always find a current version of the DVD FAQ online at www.dvddemystified.com/dvd/. | ||||
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