Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
an industrywide chain reaction with several other studios following suit. The final blow
came in February 2008, when Toshiba announced it would cease production of HD-DVD
players, effectively ending the war once and for all.
Although a few combo Blu-Ray writable/HD-DVD readable drives (which also feature
backward-compatibility with standard DVD and CD media) were introduced (the first
combo drives feature LG's Super Multi Blue drive technology), HD-DVD players and
discs quickly disappeared from the market after 2008.
Optical Disc Formats
Optical drives can use many types of disc formats and standards. This section discusses
theformatsandfilesystemsusedbyopticaldrives,soyoucanmakesureyoucanuseme-
dia recorded in a particular format with your drive.
CD Formats
After Philips and Sony created the Red Book CD-DA format discussed earlier in the
chapter, they began work on other format standards that would allow CDs to store com-
puter files, data, and even video and photos. These standards control how the data is
formatted so that the drive can read it, and additional file format standards can then con-
trol how the software and drivers on your PC can be designed to understand and interpret
the data properly. Note that the physical format and storage of data on the disc as defined
in the Red Book was adopted by all subsequent CD standards. This refers to the encoding
and basic levels of error correction provided by CD-DA discs. The other “books” specify
primarily how the 2,352 bytes in each sector are to be handled, what type of data can be
stored, how it should be formatted, and more.
All the official CD standard topics and related documents can be purchased from Philips
for $100—$150 each. See the Philips licensing site at
www.ip.philips.com
for more in-
formation.
Table11.18
describesthevariousstandardCDformats,whicharediscussedinmoredetail
in the following sections.
Table 11.18 Compact Disc Formats
