‘Ultimate’ in home recording ready soon

Press, 15 July 1987, Page 12

‘Ultimate’ in home recording ready soon

NZPA-Reuter Tokyo Billed as the ultimate in home re~ording technology, digital audio tape systems are poised to hit Western markets in October.

But wrangles over antipiracy legislation will have to be overcome before the new D.A.T. recorders sweep the world, sparking off a new audio revolution. D.A.T.S can make recordings of compact disc quality on a cassette half the size of conventional tapes. This has aroused fears in the music industry of massive losses of royalties through home-taping and commercial piracy.

“The threat is enormous,” said Mr Tokugen Yamamoto, president of Warner-Pioneer Corp, a Japanese record company in which Warner Bros, of the United States, holds a 51 per cent stake. Manufacturers of prerecorded cassettes have even refused to market digital tapes until the United States and European Community pass laws requiring all D.A.T. recorders to be fitted with an anti-piracy device.

The manufacturers, united in the International Federation of Phonogram and Videogram Producers, want all D.A.T. recorders to be fitted with an electronic microchip devised by the American C.B.S. company. Called Copycode, the anti-piracy chip would prevent DAT systems from being used as re-

corders. While the United States Congress and European Commission are still deliberating, the electronics industry is fiercely opposed to the Copycode system, seeing it as a D.A.T. death sentence.

Many Japanese manufacturers would simply not bother to export their machines if Copycode chips were mandatory, a spokesman for the Electronic Industries Association of Japan said. “The chip attacks the advance of technology and denies the benefits of new technology to consumers,” he said. “A D.A.T. recorder with a Copycode chip would be no more than a player.” The major Japanese D.A.T. makers, along with Dutch manufacturer Philips, are holding off exports until the antipiracy dispute is resolved. “They don’t want to antagonise local sentiment and risk sales of other products such as compact discs and video cassette recorders,” one industry analyst said.

The result is a stalemate of high prices and no software which is unlikely to be broken by October, when American Marantz markets D.A.T. recorders in the United States and Grundig starts selling them in Europe, an analyst said. Prices are only likely to come down when manufacturers can be sure of being able to sell D.A.T. recorders in large numbers. That, in turn, de-

pends on the anti-piracy' dispute being resolved. With the cheapest machines in Japan selling for 180,000 yen ($2016), D.A.T. recorders are for “audio maniacs” only at the moment.

“We’ve sold only 150 units since March,” said a spokesman for Dai-Ichi Katei Denki, a retailer with 160 stores in the Tokyo area. “People are waiting for prices to fall, as they did with CD players,” he said. Machines sold in Japan are fitted with a computer chip to prevent direct digital copying, although copies can be made through a conventional analogue amplifier with virtually no loss of quality. Although D.A.T. is off to a slow start, analysts agree that once full-scale production begins, an audio revolution will begin. “D.A.T. will take off as you can’t imagine,” Mr Shinji Yamazaki, an analyst with Sanyo Securities, said.

“If the coypright problem were solved soon, production would reach 56 million units or 770 billion yen ($8.73 billion) in 1995, by which time the digitalisation of consumer audio equipment will be nearly complete,” he said. Mr Yamazaki predicted that once full-scale production started, prices would plunge 30 per cent a year until D.A.T. decks cost 25,000 yen ($285) and car units 10,000 ($117).