Next-Generation DVD Players Ready to Flex Their Brain Power

Digital video disc players are one of the fastest-growing products in consumer-electronics history, largely because their picture and sound quality are far better than a VCR’s.

But the difference is more than cosmetic--DVD players have more brain power than VCRs. They just haven’t been asked to do much with it.

That situation is starting to change, as Hollywood studios begin experimenting with ways to use the player’s power and as player manufacturers explore new applications. As a result, consumers can expect DVD players to bring more types of entertainment to the TV screen, as well as new ways to experience it.

Much of the intelligence of a DVD player is dedicated to extracting data from a disc and converting it into something a TV set can understand. For other functions, it’s about as powerful as a 4- or 5-year-old computer, said Isaac Shenberg, a senior vice president at Zoran Corp., which makes the chips found in many players.

That’s a fair amount of processing power, but the typical player is short on memory. As a result, it is not capable of running sophisticated software programs, such as computer games.

What it can do is navigate through a video in far more interesting and complex ways than a VCR, which can’t leap instantly from one spot in the tape to any other spot. That capability, in turn, opens the door to some intriguing new applications.

For example, examine the latest DVD version of “Die Hard” from 20th Century Fox’s Five Star Collection. In addition to such typical extras as the director’s commentary and outtakes, it offers the chance to reedit a few scenes digitally. Viewers run through several alternative takes and angles for each segment of a scene, splicing together their choices and comparing them to the original.

The 10- to 15-minute exercise provides an entertaining lesson in the craft of filmmaking. It’s the sort of interactive exploration that you might do with a computer, only with a remote control instead of a mouse.

Another example is the “infinifilm” DVD series from New Line Cinema, an arm of AOL Time Warner. These DVDs let viewers move seamlessly back and forth between the film’s narrative and extra footage, enabling viewers to dive deeper into background material or restore deleted scenes.

For example, as viewers watch “13 Days,” a movie about the Cuban missile crisis, they can call up short interviews and film clips related to the people and events appearing on screen. A menu pops up periodically at the bottom of the screen, inviting the viewer to pause the movie and check out extra footage relevant to that segment.

That sort of approach isn’t a good way to watch a movie for the first time--the interruptions drain the intensity and drama. But for repeat viewers, the extra segments go a long way toward satisfying the curiosity piqued by the movie.

The studios also can use the player’s limited memory to give the DVD a personality. That’s what Disney is doing next month with “Snow White,” the first of its Platinum DVDs.

Instead of a static menu, the disc provides an animated, interactive host: the evil queen’s talking mirror. The point is to help and to entertain viewers as they make their way around the vast contents of the two-disc set.

These features work with the DVDs already on the market. The next generation of players, some of which are starting to appear now, will use new hardware and software to push the capabilities further.

In particular, the new players will be able to handle more types of audio and video discs. They also might provide new ways to feed digital files into the player and onto the TV screen--through the Internet, for example, or a home network.

One of the first of the new breed is due in stores this month. The ViDVD from Vialta, which costs less than $300, is a DVD player that can play movie, photo, MP3 and karaoke discs. It comes with a built-in dial-up modem, e-mail software and a Web browser.

One feature manufacturers seem eager to offer is the ability to display digital photos. Parker Lee of Planetweb, a company that makes interactive software for DVD players, said players are in the works that can read images off Kodak PhotoCDs, other standard-format discs, scanners, memory cards and even Web sites.

Add a USB connector and a DVD player could link almost any digital device to the TV, Lee said. For example, it could be used to view and edit the contents of a portable digital music player, feeding it with MP3 files from a homemade CD.

Planetweb originally had focused on bringing the Web to DVD players, but Lee said the company no longer sees that as a compelling feature. Still, Shenberg of Zoran said several companies are still pushing for that kind of interactivity.

“Connecting to the Internet is not, I would say, a technical issue,” Shenberg said. “It’s the need to find a compelling application that a consumer would be willing to pay more for.”

Manufacturers also worry that incorporating the Net would add an unwelcome degree of complexity to their products, which already are more complicated than VCRs. On the other hand, enabling DVD players to connect to networks--online or at home--would open the door to a host of new applications and services, Shenberg said.

Some possibilities include providing bonus material or updated video clips online. Discs also could come with encrypted songs or videos that consumers could unlock online for an extra fee.

Shenberg said his company’s latest chips have their own Web browsing software that runs parallel to the DVD playback. That way, viewers could overlay material from the Web onto music or videos from the disc.

What’s missing today is programming that would take advantage of such a feature. “The issue is to find the application” that drives demand for the new features, Shenberg said, adding, “It will evolve.”