MUMBAI: DVDs have an important role to play in the wake of competition leading to a drop in pricing, speakers at a seminar said here today.

"Pricing would make DVDS more affordable," CII deputy chairman and Wartsila India MD Banmali Agrawala said in his welcome address.

The seminar on `DVDs: The Road Ahead‘, organised by CII and DVD+RW Alliance, discussed on global perspectives on DVD media and the future for DVD + R/RW (an advanced recordable / rewritable DVD format).

DVD+RW Alliance Board Chair / Philips IP&S Frank Simonis extolled the versatility of the medium and said, “Storage capacity has increased because of the innovation of a ‘dual layer’, while the ability to re-write data on the DVD+RW repetitively make it versatile.”

He also explained how the industry had gone about the task of spreading information about the new latest format using different resources, so that end users could understand its advantage. He pointed out the importance of understanding how the recordable / rewriteable DVD format can help business as a reliable and robust storage media.

CII national committee chairman on electronics, hardware and peripherals and chairman of Moser Baer Deepak Puri pressed on the urgent need to demystify technology for the end-user and pointed out that DVD offers lowest cost per MB of storage.

Mahesh Rangra of Moser Baer also made a presentation on the Indian market scenario, saying, “The overall optical disk market is 1006 million units. CD-ROMs are a predominant 89 per cent, DVD-ROMs 10 per cent, while CD R/W comprises one per cent of the Indian market.”

The seminar was also addressed by industry leaders in the optical media, drawn from different parts of the world, including Marianne Cali of Hewlett-Packard, Masashi Mizuta of Sony, Dr. Paul Weijenbergh DCCG Chair / Philips IP&S, Kazuo Kobayashi DCCG Deputy Chair / Ricoh, Hideharu Takeshima MKM, Vivek Chaturvedi Moser Baer India VP international marketing, and Hisao Tatsumi DVD +RW Alliance Board / Ricoh.