DVD is indeed a major revolution, in the living room, on computers, and for video production. As the fastest-growing new consumer electronics product, DVD sales have surpassed VCRs, and movies on DVD are supplanting tapes for sales and rental. Meanwhile, on the computer, prices for DVD burners, recordable discs, and authoring software continue to drop, making desktop DVD authoring feasible for professionals, business, and now consumers.

This evening will explore the state of the DVD industry, especially for recordable formats, and examine the current trends and future possibilities for the DVD revolution:

• Douglas Dixon will begin the evening by laying the groundwork for making sense of DVD -- as a logical and physical disc format, as a consumer electronics and computer product, for playing and recording on the set-top and the desktop.
• Sandra Benedetto of Pioneer Electronics will discuss the general state of recordable DVD technology. She will provide some perspective on product trends and customer uses of recordable digital video disc formats, and elaborate on the applications that recordable DVD media is best suited for; what has been done and where she sees the future going.
• Ralph LaBarge of Alpha DVD will discuss his experience with the current DVD production and authoring process, with an emphasis on how to design, develop, test, and release high-quality DVD titles as efficiently as possible.

Sandra Benedetto is Director of Product Development for Pioneer Electronics USA, Business Solutions Division. She is responsible for DVD product and application development for the professional, industrial and educational markets. With more than fifteen years of experience in the interactive technology, optical disc, and multimedia industries, Ms. Benedetto has worked in hardware, software and content development for LaserDisc, CD-ROM and now DVD technologies.

Ralph LaBarge is an independent DVD title developer, and author of "DVD Authoring & Production" published by CMP Books. He is a member of the DVD Association (DVDA) Board of Directors, and a columnist for DV magazine. With master's degrees in electrical engineering and computer science and over 12 years of practical experience in the fields of digital video compression and DVD, Ralph is widely recognized as a DVD expert. He specializes in the development of cutting-edge consumer DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, and WebDVD titles, including AVIA Guide to Home Theater, Mars: The Red Planet, the Naxos Musical Journey series, The Planet Earth series, StarGaze and USA on DVD.

Douglas Dixon develops multimedia products at Sarnoff Corporation. He is a contributing editor for Camcorder and Computer Video magazine, and writes for the U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton. His new book, "Desktop DVD Authoring," is being published in October by New Riders, and a new edition of his "How to Use Adobe Premiere 6.5" book will be published in November.

A pre-meeting dinner with the speaker is held at 6 p.m. at the Rusty Scupper on Alexander Road in Princeton. If you would like to attend, please RSVP with an e-mail to princetonacm@acm.org.

Princeton ACM / IEEE Computer Society meeting are open to the public. Students and their parents are welcome. There is no admission charge, and refreshments are served.