DVD

History of the DVD

During the early 1990s there were two high density optical storage standards in development; one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density Disc (SD), supported by Toshiba, Time-Warner, Matsushita Electric, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson and JVC. IBM's president, Lou Gerstner, acting as a matchmaker, led an effort to unite the two camps behind a single standard, anticipating a repeat of the costly format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s. The result was the DVD format, announced in September of 1995, and finalized in 1996.

Related Topics:
1990s - MultiMedia Compact Disc - Philips - Sony - Super Density Disc - Toshiba - Time-Warner - Matsushita Electric - Hitachi - Mitsubishi Electric - Pioneer - Thomson - JVC - IBM - Format war - VHS - Betamax - 1980s - 1995

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Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba's SD format with two modifications that are both related to the servo tracking technology. The first one was the adoption of a pit geometry that allows 'push-pull' tracking, a proprietary Philips/Sony technology. The second modification was the adoption of Philips' EFMPlus. EFMPlus, created by Kees Immink, who also designed EFM, is 6% less efficient than Toshiba's SD code, which resulted in a capacity of 4.7 Gbyte instead of SD's original 5 Gbyte. The great advantage of EFMPlus is its great resilience against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints.

Related Topics:
EFMPlus - Kees Immink

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The official DVD specification was released in Version 1.0 in September, 1996. It is maintained by the DVD Forum, formerly the DVD Consortium, consisting of the ten founding companies and over 220 additional members. The first DVD players and discs were available in November of 1996 in Japan, March of 1997 in the United States, 1998 in Europe and in 1999 in Australia

Related Topics:
September - 1996 - DVD Forum - November - Japan - March - 1997 - United States - 1998 - Europe - 1999

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Sony and Philips, disillusioned by Toshiba?s hegemony in the DVD Forum and the small royalty part of the DVD pie, immediately started working on the Blu-Ray disc. For various reasons, mainly lack of consumer?s interest and very high blue laser price, it took eight years before Sony released the Blu-Ray disc system in 2003.

Related Topics:
DVD Forum - Blu-Ray - 2003

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By the spring of 1999, the price of a DVD player had dropped below the US $300 mark. At that point Wal-Mart began to offer DVD players for sale in its stores. When Wal-Mart began selling DVDs in their stores, DVDs represented only a small part of their video inventory; VHS tapes of movies made up the remainder.

Related Topics:
Spring - 1999 - US - Wal-Mart - VHS

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As of 2005, the situation is now completely reversed; most retail stores offer mostly DVDs for sale, while VHS copies of movies are now the minority of sales. The price of a DVD player has dropped to below the level of a typical VCR; a low-end player can be purchased for under US$30 in a number of retail stores. Most, but not all, movie "sets" or series have been released in box sets, as have some entire seasons or selected episode volumes of older and newer television programs.

Related Topics:
2005 - Retail stores - VCR - Box sets - Television

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DVD rentals first topped those of VHS during the week of June 15, 2003. Circuit City and Best Buy stopped selling VHS in 2002 and 2003, respectively. In June 2005, Wal-Mart and several other retailers announced plans to phase out the VHS format entirely, in favor of the more popular DVD format. http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=industryNews&storyID=2005-06-13T125017Z_01_N13307602_RTRIDST_0_INDUSTRY-FILM-WALMART-DC.XML

Related Topics:
June 15 - 2003 - Circuit City - Best Buy - 2002 - 2005

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In 2000, Sony released its PlayStation 2 console in Japan. In addition to playing video games developed for the system, it was also able to play DVD movies. In Japan, this proved to be a huge selling point due to the fact that the PS2 was much cheaper than many of the DVD players available there. As a result, many electronic stores that normally did not carry video game consoles carried PS2s.

Related Topics:
2000 - Sony - PlayStation 2 - Japan - Video games

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Following on with this tradition Sony has decided to implement one of DVD's possible successors, Blu Ray, into their next PlayStation console currently known as the PlayStation 3. Microsoft's Xbox, released a year after the PlayStation 2, also had the capability to play DVD discs with an add-on kit, cementing the DVD's place in video game consoles.

Related Topics:
Blu Ray - PlayStation 3 - Microsoft's - Xbox - Video game consoles

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"DVD" was originally an initialism for "digital video disc"; some members of the DVD Forum believe that it should stand for "digital versatile disc", to indicate its potential for non-video applications. Toshiba, which maintains the official DVD Forum site http://www.dvdforum.org/faq-dvdprimer.htm#1, adheres to the interpretation of "digital versatile disc." The DVD Forum never reached a consensus on the matter, however, and so today the official name of the format is simply "DVD"; the letters do not "officially" stand for anything.http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html

Related Topics:
Initialism - Toshiba

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