CD Recorder for Home Unveiled : Electronics: Product by Denon allows consumers to record their own compact discs from existing records, tapes or other discs, but it comes with a hefty price tag.
Consumer electronics manufacturer Denon Thursday introduced what it billed as the first compact disc recorder for the home at a price of $19,000.
Up to now, consumers have been able to buy prerecorded compact discs and players but could not record their own CDs from existing records, tapes or other discs. The Denon system enables them to do that--albeit at a hefty price. Denon said it expects its prices to drop sharply within the next year and that units could sell for $5,000 in two years. Recordable discs for the system sell for $40 each.
The Japanese manufacturer said it expects a limited market--affluent hobbyists and professionals--for the system at current prices. Total sales are expected in “the tens” of units in 1991, increasing to “the hundreds” of units in 1992, said Robert Heiblim, Denon America’s president, as the product was introduced at Dow Stereo Video in San Diego.
The electronics retail chain said it sold two systems Thursday. Jim Kunisch, the owner of a Cardiff mail-order business, said he bought one of the systems to make duplicate discs to play in his car on long-distance business trips.
But more is at stake than short-term unit sales, Heiblim said. Manufacturers are jockeying for marketing advantages in the fast-growing compact disc player market, now estimated at 6 million unit sales per year. Companies like Denon can exploit technological superiority, even if the price is out of the reach of the vast majority of consumers, said Paul Gluckman, managing editor of the New York-based Audio Week newsletter.
“I’d caution against making too much of it,” Gluckman said of the new Denon product, adding that the recorder was designed with a professional audience and market in mind. Gluckman said Thursday that he doubts Denon’s claim that it can lower its price to affordable levels any time soon because he doesn’t believe it can move to mass production until industry standards are set, partly because many technical issues surrounding industry standards are unresolved.
But Heiblim insists that unit prices will fall, following a trend set by digital audio tape players, big screen color television sets and several other consumer electronics products whose prices have fallen in recent years.
Marketability aside, the new Denon model strikes at the core of one of the hottest issues in home audio: the direction of compact disc player technology and what part the ability to record at home will play.
Several observers think the future of compact disc players will belong to manufacturers who can make systems that allow consumers to record on the same disc several times, as with audiocasette tapes, on which material can be erased and re-recorded. The lack of ability to erase puts Denon’s system at a disadvantage, those observers said.
Sony, the world’s leading compact disc manufacturer, announced in May that it expects to introduce in late 1992 a re-recordable, compact disc system costing $300 to $600 called Mini Disc that will be highly portable, much like Walkman tape players, Sony spokeswoman Shari Haber said.
Disadvantages of the Sony system, according to industry analysts, are that the sound quality does not match store-bought CDs and that the discs can be played only on Sony machines. Heiblim said the Denon CDs can be played on CD players made by other manufacturers.
And Heiblim cautioned that technological hurdles in making high-quality, re-recordable compact discs will take years to overcome because the existing re-recordable disc medium is too easily damaged by outside light, ultraviolet rays and magnetic power.
Denon’s disc technology, which the company said it spent two decades developing, involves a green dye on which the CD player’s laser burns a digital shadow. The reflective system mimics store-bought CDs, which involve a pressing process with microscopic pits read by a laser beam.
