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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 (not to be confused with secure digital cards) 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 GB as opposed to SD's original
5 GB. The great advantage of EFMPlus is its great resilience against
disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints. The result was the
DVD specification Version 1.5, announced in 1995 and finalized in
September 1996. In May 1997, the DVD Consortium was replaced by the
DVD Forum, which is open to all companies.
"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 latter interpretation, and indeed
this appeared within the copyright warnings on some of the earliest
examples. However, the DVD Forum never reached a consensus on the
matter, and so today the official name of the format is simply "DVD";
the letters do not officially stand for anything.
Warner Home Video and Toshiba introduced the new format to Wall Street
types, Hollywood big wigs and the investment community at an elaborate
staged event on the Warner Bros. lot, hosted by Warner Home Video
then President Warren Lieberfarb. The production included the first
ever interactive DVD menu designed by producer Billy Pollina. 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 release was the film Twister in 1996. The film
had the first test for 2.1 surround sound. The first titles released
in the U.S., on March 19, 1997, by Lumivision, authored by AIX Entertainment,
were IMAX adaptations: Africa: The Serengeti, Antarctica: An Adventure
of a Different Nature, Tropical Rainforest, and Animation Greats.
By the spring of 1999 the price of a DVD player had dropped below
$300 US. At that point Wal-Mart began to offer DVD players for sale,
but DVDs represented only a small part of their video inventory; VHS
tapes of films made up the remainder. Wal-Mart's competitors followed
suit, and DVDs began to increase in popularity with American consumers.
DVD rentals first topped those of VHS during the week of June 15,
2003 (27.7 M rentals DVD vs. 27.3 M rentals VHS). Major U.S. retailers
Circuit City and Best Buy stopped selling pre-recorded 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. However, blank VHS tapes are
still widely available since DVD video recorders are significantly
less common than DVD players. Many films released to theaters from
2004 onwards are released solely to DVD format and not to VHS format.
Consumers have predicted that 2006 would be the final year for new
releases on VHS.
While the growth of theatrical films on DVD has cooled recently,
that of television programs and music video has increased dramatically.
The price of a DVD player has dropped to below the level of a typical
VCR (although DVD recorders are still usually more expensive than
VCRs); a low-end player with reasonable quality can be purchased for
under $35 US in many retail stores and many modern computers are sold
with DVD-ROM drives. Also popular are units that have integrated a
DVD and VHS VCR into a single device; these can be purchased for under
$100 US. Most, but not all, movie "sets" or series have
been released in boxed sets, as have some entire seasons or selected
episode volumes of older and newer television programs.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD
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