Chapter 376: Market Coolness
It has been almost half a year since the release of the CD-ROM Blue Book.
During this period, three electronic technology companies led by Shirakawa Electric, Sony and Philips were all stepping up their layout in the optical drive field.
But there is no doubt that as an inventor, Shirakawa Electric is the fastest.
After several months of polishing, the originally very simple optical drive system has now turned into a square black box.
“How is the service life? Can it meet the design requirements?”
Baichuan Feng picked up the external optical drive in front of him and shook it, feeling that it was quite heavy.
“Because the first products to be shipped are business-type optical drives, we have selected the most reliable materials for both the motor and the laser head.
According to internal tests, there will be no problem with using it for more than 5 years.”
Heitaro Nakajima turned on the computer and connected a black external optical drive to the host computer.
With a slight "beep" sound, a green indicator light on the top of the optical drive lit up.
Soon as the system operated, the CDD symbol representing the optical drive disk was found.
Once inside, documents are densely packed in front of you.
"Not bad." Baichuan Feng nodded with satisfaction. This was much smoother than the first time.
Microsoft has also added corresponding functions to the system to identify optical drives.
Led by IBM and promoted by Sony, Philips and Shirakawa Electric, Microsoft quickly followed up with the development of related systems and software.
As a professional software company, the experience after Microsoft updated the system is much better than that of Fujitsu, which was a half-baked company at the beginning.
Although the DOS system is still extremely simple, there is no problem in using the basic CD-ROM drive.
"Has the supply from North America started?"
Baichuan Feng put down the external optical drive in his hand and began to care about the market situation on the other side of the ocean.
"Hai, the freighter has been sailing for two weeks."
This question was answered by Yakumo Sasaki, who is in charge of warehousing and is now in charge of the logistics scheduling of all Shirakawa Electric's products.
For this kind of large-scale transoceanic transportation, cargo ships have the lowest cost.
Of course, it will take relatively long time. It takes about a month from Neon to North Miami.
According to the original agreement, Shirakawa Electric will first provide a total of 10,000 sets of built-in optical drives as the first batch of products.
Among them, there are 6,000 sets of 2x speed optical drives and 4,000 sets of 4x speed optical drives.
And these 10,000 optical drives are all specially designed business versions.
As for the optical drives for ordinary users, IBM intends to produce a thousand sets first to test the waters.
After considering this, Shirakawa Electric agreed to IBM's request.
After all, it is the client, and Shirakawa Electric will produce as many products as the orders it places.
In the computer field in North America, IBM is the boss, and Shirakawa Electric is unable to promote the popularization of optical drives on its own.
However, in addition to shipments to North America, Shirakawa Electric's external optical drives are also launched in Japan's domestic market.
The black box, 15 cm long and 5 cm high, seems to be about the same size as the floppy drive .
The Japanese media has reported on optical drives countless times.
So the moment it is placed on the counter, it is bound to attract the attention of the public.
So on the day of the launch, some people with plenty of money bought an external optical drive out of curiosity to try it out.
Because optical drives are expensive, even the cheapest one in Neon costs $159, which is equivalent to nearly 40,000 yen.
So every customer who purchases a CD-ROM drive will receive a few CDs for free.
There are some literary works that have been pressed in advance, as well as comics that have been serialized. They all come from the copyright library of Tokuma Shoten.
In order to enrich the distribution content of CD-ROMs and to avoid users having no place to use the CD-ROM drives they purchased, Shirakawa Denki simply pressed some of Tokuma Shoten's serialized books and magazines onto CDs.
Although current computers use DOS systems, images can still be viewed through specific software.
As a result, novels and comics became the first users of CD-ROM and optical drive platforms.
However, Shirakawa Electric's idea is good, but the feedback from users after actual experience is not very good.
“Although the CD-ROM drive is very convenient to use, the novels and comics on the CD are very rich, and there is even a thoughtful catalog index.
But staring at the computer screen for a long time will make your eyes tired.
So as I relaxed with the magazine next to me, I realized why not just buy the physical book? ”
"I don't like reading novels and comics. After I bought the CD-ROM drive, I had no idea what to do with myself."
“The machines are expensive and have a lot of storage capacity, but they just don’t do anything.”
"A 700MB CD is hundreds of times larger than my floppy disk, but I can only look at it and cannot control it."
The reports in the newspapers looked dazzling and made Baichuan Feng frown.
As attention-grabbing as the reports on the optical drive were at the time, the doubts about it now are just as fierce.
Now he also understood why IBM insisted on using optical drives on mainframes and compatible computers first.
After all, it was just the year 1983, and the DOS system of computers did not support video playback.
This greatly limits the choices of content that can be burned on CD-ROMs, and those complex formats are not supported by current computers at all.
Software based on this operating system is generally smaller, and due to the limitations of the CPU capabilities, the files processed by the computer are also relatively small.
As for multimedia, which became popular in later generations and became inseparable from our lives, at that time even the concept had not been systematized, and some research institutions had merely put forward related ideas.
This results in the huge capacity of optical drives and CD-ROMs seeming to be completely useless on current computers.
Users cannot use it to enjoy music and movies, or store their own collections.
The former is because the computer does not support it, and the latter is because the optical drive does not support it.
Therefore, today's optical drives and CD-ROMs are facing an embarrassing situation: they are nice, but seem to be useless.
This is also the reason why users and the media have raised questions. After all, you boasted so much about it at the beginning, but when you finally get it, you find that it is far from as good as you imagined.
However, it is not to be said that they are useless. Many companies have given high praise to optical drives.
Because they often have a large amount of data to store, and the disk is too small to hold a few files.
Mechanical hard drives are too expensive and bulky.
This has led to many companies still retaining data storage rooms. The rows of filing cabinets and dusty file bags are the primitive storage method that is widely used today.
But now with the advent of CDs, things are different. A 12cm disc can hold the contents of 150,000 sheets of 16K paper.
There is no doubt that this is absolutely good news for companies with large file storage needs. After IBM's recommendation, many companies have expressed their intention to purchase.
The business optical drives shipped to North America this time will basically be installed on mainframes and business-compatible computers.
Shirakawa Electric even received orders from many companies for pressing CD-ROM discs.
After all, only with an optical drive and by burning your own data into a CD can its function be fully utilized.
All the data that needs to be burned will be pressed by Shirakawa Electric's CD factory.
The same is true in Neon, where most of the buyers of optical drives are public utilities.
The CD pressing orders of these departments are basically divided between Sony and Shirakawa Electric.
As a brand-new technology, institutions with special needs are often the first to use it.
However, although ordinary users do not have such a strong demand for optical drives, the business-type optical drives shipped this time still brought Shirakawa Electric a huge profit.
Because of its high selling price, this batch of goods from North America alone can bring Shirakawa Electric a profit of 6.7 million US dollars.
The double-speed optical drive sells for $600, leaving a profit of $450 after deducting various costs.
The quad-speed optical drive sells for $1,300, and the net profit is as high as $1,000.
This is indeed a huge profit. Even though the use of optical drives still has great limitations, the profits make up for the lack of shipments.
The commercial application of optical drives has just started. Although they have received good reviews on mainframes, the feedback from ordinary users cannot be ignored.
"When will our recordable disc format be resolved?"
Baichuan Feng put down the newspaper in his hand and cast his gaze towards the people below.
At this moment, the conference room was filled with Shirakawa Electric's decision-makers, from the manufacturing department to the design department.
However, because the optical drive is not highly regarded in the market, everyone is not very happy about it.
Hearing Shirakawa Kaede's question, Nakajima Heitaro answered first.
“The CD-R format was developed jointly with Sony and Philips, so it is expected to be standardized and enter the commercial stage next year.
As for the rewritable CD-RW format, it will be a little slower, but it won’t be too late.”
A large part of the current user dissatisfaction is due to the fact that individuals cannot control the storage space of CDs.
This is equivalent to having a fair girl in front of you, but when you touch her with your hand, you discover there is a layer of glass in between.
So although the floppy disk has a small capacity, it is so popular because it has the function of erasing and writing.
Before recordable optical discs come out, there is still a long way to go to promote the application of optical drives.
Of course, if computers develop to support multimedia format playback, optical drives will also usher in explosive growth.
However, instead of relying on Microsoft to develop the Windows system as soon as possible, it is better to work harder on our own.
“This year’s desktop CD player development plan adds a new task.
We need a device that can support CD-ROM data reading and parsing. "
After Baichuan Feng put down the pen in his hand, he gave the order very firmly.
"Eh?" Nakajima Heitaro was stunned for a moment, then his frown relaxed slightly, "Shirakawa-san, what do you mean...?"
“Since current computers don’t support video playback, we can do it ourselves.
A CD-ROM player needs to be able to play music or images, just like a videotape player.
Nakajima-san, from a technical point of view, is there any problem with doing this?"
Shirakawa Kaede had no way to solve the technological progress of recordable optical discs.
However, there are ways to fully utilize the advantages of CD-ROM.
When they understood his plan, everyone's eyes brightened.
Nakajima Heitaro immediately took on the task and said, "There is absolutely no problem with this. Our optical disc drive can be launched as scheduled in October."
In addition to videotapes, there are also LD disc players on the market. Its principle is similar to that of CD, which can be used as a reference for Shirakawa Electric's design.
Therefore, from the perspective of technical difficulty, there is absolutely no problem in converting CD-ROM images.
“In addition to optical discs, we also need a large amount of video data as a content distribution library.
All movies before the theatrical release are compressed into discs so that users have something to watch.
We also contacted Shochiku, Toho, and Toei, as well as the TV dramas from major TV stations, which are the best content distributors for DVD players.
By the way, especially Nikkatsu, you need to pay special attention to it."
"Nikkatsu?" Everyone looked puzzled.
