Panel Reaches Pact on DVD Standard

Executives from the entertainment and electronics industries announced the agreement on copyright protection issues that for months have delayed the launch of highly anticipated digital video disk players. The pact eases concerns over piracy of music and movies in new digital formats. The deal sets a software scheme that scrambles content when making the digital video disks, then provides hardware for unscrambling the signal when played back. This greatly complicates efforts to make pirated copies of the disks. Developed by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Toshiba Corp., the technology will be licensed through a nonprofit entity. Sales of DVD disk drives and players are forecast to generate $349 million in 1997, but that could rise to as high as $4.1 billion in 2000, analysts say.