DVD History
In the early 1990s two high density optical storage standards were being developed: 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.
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 4.7GB instead of SD's original 5GB. The great advantage of EFMPlus is its great resilience against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints. The result was the DVD specification Version 1.0, announced in 1995 and finalized in September 1996.
The first DVD players and discs were available in November 1996 in Japan, March 1997 in the United States, 1998 in Europe and in 1999 in Australia. The first pressed DVD was the movie Twister in 1996. The movie had the first test for 2.1 surround sound. In 1999 Independence Day was the first movie to introduce 5.1 surround sound.
By the spring of 1999 the price of a DVD player had dropped below the $300 US 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.
As of 2005 the situation is now completely reversed; DVD sales make up the bulk of gross sales and VHS is a slim minority. The price of a DVD player has dropped to below the level of a typical VCR; a low-end player with reasonable quality can be purchased for under US$50 in many retail stores and many modern computers are sold with DVD-ROM drives stock. 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.
DVD rentals first topped those of VHS during the week of June 15, 2003 (27.7M rentals DVD vs. 27.3M rentals VHS). Major U.S. retailers Circuit City and Best Buy stopped selling VHS tapes 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.
According to the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), all DVD sales and rentals (films, television series, special interests, etc) totaled $21.2 billion in 2004. The sales portion of that was $15.5 billion. In comparison, the total 2004 US box office for theatrical rentals was $9.53 billion (per the National Association of Theater Owners or NATO). While the growth of theatrical films on DVD has cooled recently, that of television programs and music video has increased dramatically.
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. This proved to be a huge selling point because the PS2 cost about the same as DVD player but could do a whole lot more. As a result, many electronic stores that normally did not carry video game consoles carried PS2s. In keeping with this tradition, Sony has announced that it will implement one of DVD's possible successors, Blu-ray, into its 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.
"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 reflect its widespread use for non-video applications. Toshiba, which maintains the official DVD Forum site [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
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 4.7GB instead of SD's original 5GB. The great advantage of EFMPlus is its great resilience against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints. The result was the DVD specification Version 1.0, announced in 1995 and finalized in September 1996.
The first DVD players and discs were available in November 1996 in Japan, March 1997 in the United States, 1998 in Europe and in 1999 in Australia. The first pressed DVD was the movie Twister in 1996. The movie had the first test for 2.1 surround sound. In 1999 Independence Day was the first movie to introduce 5.1 surround sound.
By the spring of 1999 the price of a DVD player had dropped below the $300 US 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.
As of 2005 the situation is now completely reversed; DVD sales make up the bulk of gross sales and VHS is a slim minority. The price of a DVD player has dropped to below the level of a typical VCR; a low-end player with reasonable quality can be purchased for under US$50 in many retail stores and many modern computers are sold with DVD-ROM drives stock. 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.
DVD rentals first topped those of VHS during the week of June 15, 2003 (27.7M rentals DVD vs. 27.3M rentals VHS). Major U.S. retailers Circuit City and Best Buy stopped selling VHS tapes 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.
According to the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), all DVD sales and rentals (films, television series, special interests, etc) totaled $21.2 billion in 2004. The sales portion of that was $15.5 billion. In comparison, the total 2004 US box office for theatrical rentals was $9.53 billion (per the National Association of Theater Owners or NATO). While the growth of theatrical films on DVD has cooled recently, that of television programs and music video has increased dramatically.
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. This proved to be a huge selling point because the PS2 cost about the same as DVD player but could do a whole lot more. As a result, many electronic stores that normally did not carry video game consoles carried PS2s. In keeping with this tradition, Sony has announced that it will implement one of DVD's possible successors, Blu-ray, into its 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.
"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 reflect its widespread use for non-video applications. Toshiba, which maintains the official DVD Forum site [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
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