Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
whereas a competing standard, called the Super Density (SD) disc, was introduced and
backed by Toshiba, Time Warner, and several other companies. If both standards had hit
the market as is, consumers as well as entertainment and software producers would have
been in a quandary over which one to choose.
Fearing a repeat of the Beta/VHS situation that occurred in the videotape market, several
organizations, including the Hollywood Video Disc Advisory Group and the Computer
Industry Technical Working Group, banded together to form a consortium to develop and
controltheDVDstandard.Theconsortiuminsistedonasingleformatfortheindustryand
refusedtoendorseeithercompetingproposal.Withthisincentive,bothgroupsworkedout
an agreement on a single, new, high-capacity CD-type disc in September 1995. The new
standard combined elements of both previously proposed standards and was called DVD,
whichoriginallystoodfor
digital video disc
buthassincebeenchangedto
digital versatile
disc
. The single DVD standard has avoided a confusing replay of the VHS-versus-Beta-
tape fiasco for movie fans and has given the software, hardware, and movie industries a
single, unified standard to support.
After copy protection and other items were agreed on, the DVD-ROM and DVD-Video
standards were officially announced in late 1996. Players, drives, and discs were an-
nounced in January 1997 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, and the
players and discs became available in March 1997. The initial players were about $1,000
each. Only 36 movies were released in the first wave, and they were available only in
sevencitiesnationwide(Chicago,Dallas,LosAngeles,NewYork,SanFrancisco,Seattle,
and Washington, DC) until August 1997 when the full release began. After a somewhat
rocky start (much had to do with agreements on copy protection to get the movie com-
panies to go along, and there was a lack of titles available in the beginning), DVD has
become an incredible success. The organization that controls the DVD video standard is
called the DVD Forum and was founded by 10 companies, including Hitachi, Matsushita,
Mitsubishi, Victor, Pioneer, Sony, Toshiba, Philips, Thomson, and Time Warner. Since its
founding in April 1997, more than 230 companies have joined the forum. Because it is
a public forum, anybody can join and attend the meetings; the site for the DVD Forum
is
www.dvdforum.org
.
Because the DVD Forum was unable to agree on a universal re-
cordable format, its members who are primarily responsible for CD and DVD technology
(Philips, Sony, and others) split off to form the DVD+RW Alliance in June 2000; their
site is
www.dvdservices.org
.
They have since introduced the DVD+RW format, which is
the fastest, most flexible and backward-compatible recordable DVD format. DVD-R/RW
and DVD+R/RW are not just for computer uses either: You can purchase DVD set-top
recorders from many vendors (some of which also contain VCRs to enable you to dub
non-copy-protected VCR tapes to DVD).
