Info about Dvds
Media Storage on DVDs
Digital Video Disc, also known as a DVD, is a format for media storage. They were invented in 1995 through a joint effort from all of the big media companies. DVDs are mainly used to store data or videos. They are exactly the same size as a CD but they can hold over six times the amount of material.
There a various ways that a DVD is labeled to tell how the data can be formatted. A DVD-ROM means that it can have no data written on it and it can only be read. A DVD+R or a DVD-R can have data written on it only one time. After that they become a DVD-ROM. A DVD-RAM can have data written on it and be erased and rewritten many times. DVD-Audio and DVD-Video refer to discs that have audio or video content on them. There are other kinds of DVDs that are just called DVD Data discs. They can also have video content on them.
The DVD was actually derived from two different optical disc formats that were being created in 1993. First there was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD) which was supported by Sony and Philips, the other one was called a Super Density disc (SD) and it was backed by Time Warner, Toshiba, Mitsubishi Electric, Thomson, JVC, Hitachi, and Pioneer.
The representatives who supported the SD went to IBM to ask for information on the file system they needed to use for their new disc and asking IBM to back their format as a means of storing computer data. A researcher at IBM’s research center, Alan E. Bell, got the request and he also found out about the MMCD project. Rather then being in the middle of another war like the one that Betamax and VHS had in the 1980s over video tape format, he called in a group of experts in the computer industry. They included representatives from Dell, Sun, Microsoft, Apple, and several others. The group was called the TWG or Technical Working Group. They were also called SK Group for Steven Kinnersley who originally created the double sided Digital Video Disc. The group decided not to work with the SD or the MMCD unless the two sides agreed on one standard format. The computer group eventually won the battle after the president of IBM applied pressure on the warring sides.
Sony and Philips decided that it would be best not to have a war over the MMCD and agreed to work with the companies that backed the SD to create a merged format. Their creation was most like the SD disc except that it had an option for dual layer. The MMCD had only one side and had an optional dual layer but the SD was a single layer that had two sides.
The new DVD format first debuted in Japan by Toshiba in November of 1996 and available by March of 1997 for test marketing in the U.S. It was introduced in October of 1998 to Europe and in February of 1999 to Australia. DVDs are now common in every day lives of people all over the world.