San Mateo, CA. The Interactive Multimedia Association has announced the first DVD World Summit, to take place during IMA Expo’96, Thursday Sept.19 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City.

The summit will focus on the emerging Digital Versatile Disc (sometimes called Digital Video Disc) storage format for video, audio and CD-ROM. It will offer the latest on the upcoming DVD and DVD-ROM market launch from senior executives of leading DVD manufacturing and technology companies.

While some major electronic and computer companies have committed to a late 1996 release or early 1997 release of DVD players, controversy rages within the industry over difficult issues such as technology licensing and copy protection. Most observers expect little consumer impact from DVD before the summer of 1997.

Summit moderator will be John Barker, Editor-in-Chief of Inside Multimedia newsletter. Speakers will include Jan Oosterveld (President, Key Modules, Philips), Alexandre Balkanski (President and CEO, C-Cube), Bentley Nelson (V-P, Pacific Video) and Mike Fidler (Senior V-P, Pioneer).

IMA promises that the speakers at DVD World Summit will provide insight into their corporate plans and strategies. The panel will examine the current state of the DVD technologies and where they are headed. They will also try to cut through the hype and discuss real issues that face producers and engineers.

“The DVD World Summit will be a significant forum dedicated exclusively to DVD,” says IMA President Philip Dodds. “The Summit will feature executives from companies driving this exciting new technology. It will without a doubt be very revealing and provide up-to-the-minute perspectives about the strategic direction of DVD from industry insiders.”

Digital Versatile Disc stores 8 – 14 times as much digital data as CD or CD-ROM. It can produce audio and video playback of remarkably high quality. Proposed standards for DVD-Audio include 24-bit 96 kHz format, and 24-bit 88.2 kHz format, as well as the existing CD format at 44.1 kHz at 16-bit resolution (with much increased play time).

“DVD is truly an enabling technology for the digital age. It will have significant and far-reaching implications in consumer electronics, computing and telecommunications,” says Mike Fidler, Senior Vice President of Pioneer Electronics and DVD World Summit participant. “DVD was developed from the ground up to meet the needs of all these industries and will be a core digital technology well into the next millennium.”

In addition to the DVD World Summit, IMA Expo will offer five other sessions focusing on the business, technology and design of DVD.