Recap

In our last episode, we learned a little about probably the most famous “Format War” of the past – surely no one would make that mistake again… right?  We’ll get to that shortly, but first a brief flashback… flashback… flashback…

In 1993, near the height of VHS’s popularity, two high-density optical storage formats were being developed; one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density (SD) disc, supported by Toshiba, Time Warner, Matsushita Electric (better known as Panasonic), Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC¹.

People working on the SD project sought the advice of IBM regarding what file system to use for their disc, as well as how the technology could be applied not only to consumer electronics, but also the PCindustry.  Having learned from the sins of the past and eager to avoid another format war, an IBM researcher, who also learned of theMMCD project, convened a group of computer industry experts (including representatives from Apple, Microsoft, Sun, Dell, and many others); this group was referred to as the Technical Working Group, or TWG. The TWG voted to boycott both formats unless the two camps agreed on a single, converged standard².

United Front

In a rousing victory for Geeks everywhere, the PC people won, and DVD was born.  The format was developed, licensed, and promoted by representatives of all of the key players who, collectively, composed the DVD Consortium (later the DVD Forum.)  Four years later, DVD was launched and, in no small part due to this unified front, skyrocketed to success (and the virtual death knell of VHS) in just a few years:  the single format fed the never-ending cycle of consumer acceptance and uptake, followed by lower production costs and lower prices.

Crystal Clear Vision:  The World Goes Hi-Def

While DVD’s greatly-increased resolution of 480 lines was overkill for most standard tube TVs, people had been viewing high resolution images and video of 1024x768 or greater for years—on their computer monitors.  In the early 2000s, plasma TVs and LCD TVs, capable of displaying video of increasing resolution and brightness, were getting larger and prices were falling—consumers began gobbling them up.  The Hi-Def (“HD”) video previously viewable only on a 17” (if you were lucky!) LCD monitor was now available in your living room:  super sized.  Satellite and cable companies began transmitting HDTV in resolutions of 720p or 1080i.  This was all well and good, except for one thing – HD video consumes storage space at an astounding rate.  As anyone who has compared the file size of a 1.0 Megapixel image to that of a 5.0 Megapixel image knows very well, better image quality means a larger file size.  DVD had been a paradigm shift away from magnetic tape (VHS) storage, but by now it was underperforming in terms of the available resolution of the new display devices people we buying in droves.  Since movies are stored on optical discs as digital files, the physical distribution medium of DVD would need a radical makeover to keep pace.

1,000 Angels on the Head of a Pin

Not coincidentally, by the early 2000s, the professional Geeks who develop such things had gotten really, really good at cramming a LOT of data onto optical storage discs.  So good, in fact, that at greater than 300% more data than on a single layer of a standard DVD, there was no practical way to read the data back OFF of the discs.  Imagine being able to write so small that no one could read your writing:  being able to fit 10,000 words on a page is great, but it doesn’t do you much good if no one (including you) can read what you’ve written.

Enter the Blue LASER

If you’re going to be writing that small, which means your letters are smaller and closer together, you’re going to need some really sharp eyes to read back what you’ve written.  The eyes that read the data from optical storage media are LASERS.  The physical size of a LASER beam itself is measured in terms of wavelength using nanometers (nm), or billionths of a meter.  A standard DVD player uses a red LASER with a wavelength of 650nm—not sharp enough to read the much smaller and more densely-packed “pits” of a Hi-Def DVD.  Fortunately, blue LASERS have a much smaller wavelength of about 405nm which makes this possible.  At three times more data per layer, times two layers on a Hi-Def disc, it had become possible to fit six times (600%) more data on a disc – perfect for storing a movie encoded in HD.

For a long time, just as with the red LASER, blue LASERS were huge, required enormous electrical power, and existed only in laboratories.  Eventually, just as with the red LASER, a semiconductor version was developed, just in time to be employed in the playback mechanism in Hi-Def DVD players in people’s living rooms.

The Stage is Set

By 2004, the pumps were primed and the stage was set:  consumer demand for HD technology was increasing rapidly, and the technical capability of industry to fulfill this desire had nearly arrived.  Once again, representatives from great technology and content innovators, producers, and marketers the world over were seated at the Round Table, trying to come to terms on a single format for physical distribution of HiDef video.  Learn what happened in Hi-Def DVD Part III:  The War of the Discs - One Format to Rule Them All.

Sources:  1, 2:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd