DVD

Some minor films can be made with a small budget and turn a profit on DVD sales alone, and some are made specifically for this purpose. FDC stands for:. However, the lucrative market for DVDs has resulted in less stigma for direct-to-DVD releases as compared to direct-to-video releases. Future Disney Cabinet, a Disney fan group. The popularity of DVDs has caused the term "direct-to-DVD" to widely replace "Direct-to-video" (see main article). Forward Data Carrier, a measurement of coming RF signal levels. The new generations of optical formats have restricted access (anti-copy mechanisms), and it is therefore possible that consumers will ignore them as they did with Super Audio CD. Follicular dendritic cell.

As true broadband (25 Mbps or higher) becomes widely available in a decade or two, physical media will become less important as a distribution format. Floppy disk controller. Direct access to large amounts of information is much more convenient with a hard disk drive. Fixed dose combination, two or more pharmaceuticals formulated together into a single delivery mechanism (tablet, capsule, etc.). The price per gigabyte of a hard disk drive, $0.20 ($100/500GB), is growing closer to that of a DVD-ROM, $0.06 ($0.50/8.5GB), or BD-ROM, $0.03 ($1.50/50GB), or recordable DVD-5, $0.10 ($0.50/4.7GB), and is lower than the cost of a recordable DVD-9, $0.30 ($2.50/8.5GB), or BD-RE25, $1.20 ($30/25GB). First Day Covers, first day of issue of stamps. However, hard disk drives and memory cards are at the moment hundreds of times more expensive than optical discs (US$50 or more compared to $0.50), so they will never replace discs as a publishing format.

A terabyte is equivalent to about 2000 CD-ROMs, 130 DVD-9s, or 20 dual-layer BDs. Hard disk drives having a few terabytes of storage capacity will be on the market before 2008. The storage capacities of hard disk drives and solid-state memory have grown faster than those of optical discs (since CD's introduction year, 1983, storage capacity of HDDs grew by a factor of about 100,000, from 5 MB to 500 GB, while the capacity of Blu-ray is only 90 times larger than CD), and all three are much more capable of storing general consumer content —such as photos, music, and video— than in the past. It is possible that neither Blu-ray, HD DVD, nor alternative next-generation optical recording products will succeed.

It is also, of course, similar to the VHS/Betamax war in consumer video recorders in the late 1970s. This situation—multiple new formats fighting as the successor to a format approaching purported obsolescence—previously appeared as the "war of the speeds" in the record industry of the 1950s; see gramophone record for details of that situation. [5]. In April, 2000, Sonic Solutions and Ravisent announced hDVD, an HDTV extension to DVD that presaged the HD formats that debuted 6 years later.

50GB for dual layer), but Blu-ray requires changes in manufacturing machinery and techniques. 25GB for single layer, 30GB vs. HD DVD discs contain less information than Blu-ray discs (15GB vs. As reported in a summer, 2005, issue of Popular Mechanics, it is not yet clear which technology will win the format war over DVD.

The disc can be easily cut with scissors and recycled, offering foolproof data security and an environment-friendly storage media. successfully developed the paper disc, a storage medium that is made out of 51% paper and offers up to 25 GB of storage, about five times more than the standard 4.7 GB DVD. On April 15, 2004, in a co-op project with TOPPAN Printing Co., the electronic giant Sony Corp. This had no effect on the competing Blu-ray Disc Association's (BDA) determination that its format would succeed DVD, especially since most of the voters belonged to both groups.

On November 19, 2003, the DVD Forum decided by a vote of eight to six that HD DVD will be its official HDTV successor to DVD. However, since then the format has generally failed to live up to expectations. On November 18, 2003, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported the final standard of the Chinese government-sponsored Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD), and several patents for it. The first generation of holographic media with 300 GB of storage capacity and a 160 Mbit/s transfer rate is scheduled for release in late 2006 by Maxell and its partner, InPhase.

There are several possible successors to DVD being developed by different consortiums: Sony/Panasonic's Blu-ray Disc (BD), Toshiba's HD DVD and Maxell's Holographic Versatile Disc(HVD). See Regional lockout. DVD drives for computers usually come with one of two kinds of Regional Playback Control (RPC), either RPC-1 or RPC-2; This is used to enforce the publisher's restrictions on what regions of the world the DVD can be played. Many players are priced from under $/€ 25 and recorders from $/€ 50.

Some also include USB ports or flash memory readers. Modern DVD recorders often support additional formats, including DVD+/-R/RW, CD-R/RW, MP3, WMA, SVCD, JPEG, PNG, SVG, KAR and MPEG-4 (DivX/XviD). Unlike DVD-Video's CSS, as of 2005, CPPM has not yet been cracked. DVD-Audio discs employ a robust copy prevention mechanism, called Content Protection for Prerecorded Media (CPRM / CPPM) supported by the DVD+RW Alliance (IBM, Intel, Matsushita, and Toshiba).

DVD-Audio currently forms a niche market, probably due to its dependency upon new and relatively expensive equipment. Despite DVD-Audio's superior technical specifications, there is debate as to whether or not the resulting audio enhancements are distinguishable to typical human ears. Compared to the CD format, the much higher capacity DVD format enables the inclusion of either considerably more music (with respect to total running time and quantity of songs) or far higher audio quality (reflected by higher linear sampling rates and higher vertical bit-rates, and/or additional channels for spatial sound reproduction). It offers many channels (from mono to 5.1 surround sound) at various sampling frequencies and sample rates.

DVD-Audio is a format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. Many grey market players ignore UOPs. by preventing fast-forwarding through a copyright message at the beginning of a disc), although some can be configured to ignore them, particularly open source player software. Most DVD players respect these commands (e.g.

This is known as User Operation Prohibitions, or UOPs for short. DVD-Video allows the disc to specify whether or not the user may perform any operation, such as selecting a menu, skipping chapters, forwarding or rewinding—essentially any function on the remote control. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has warned that DVD-Video players that enforce region coding may violate the Trade Practices Act [3]; the government of New Zealand has ruled similarly [4]. Many view region code enforcement as a violation of WTO free trade agreements or competition law.

Dozens of Web sites provide information on how to disable region checking in many players. Some manufacturers of DVD players now freely supply information on how to disable regional lockout, and on some recent models, it appears to be disabled by default. Others simply bypass the region code check entirely. Nowadays, many "multi-region" DVD players defeat regional lockout and RCE by automatically identifying and matching a disc's region code and/or allowing the user to manually select a particular region.

This system is known as "Regional Coding Enhancement" or RCE. This apparent solution was popular in the early days of the DVD format, but studios quickly responded by adjusting discs to refuse to play in such machines. The term "Region 0" also describes DVD players that were designed or modified to incorporate Regions 1–6 simultaneously, thereby providing compatibility with virtually any disc, irrespective of region[s]. Often labeled "all" or "all regions," a so-called "Region 0" disc (actually coded Region 1/2/3/4/5/6) is meant to be playable worldwide.

For example, a DVD designated Region 2/4 is suitable for playback in Western Europe, Oceania and any other Region 2 or Region 4 area. Any combination of regions can be applied to a single disc. "D4" identifies DVDs that are distributed throughout Europe. "D2" and "D3" identify European DVDs that are not sold in the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

European Region 2 DVDs may be sub-coded "D1" through "D4." "D1" identifies a UK-only release. See a world map showing region codes. Entirely independent of encryption, region coding pertains to regional lockout, which originated in the video game industry. In practice, many DVD players allow playback of any disc, or can be modified to do so.

In theory, this allows the motion picture studios to control the various aspects of a release (including content, date and price) on a region-by-region basis. The commercial DVD-Video player specification dictates that a player must only play discs that contain its region code. Each DVD-Video disc contains one or more region codes (sometimes called zones), denoting the area(s) of the world in which distribution and playback are intended. In the past few years a large amount of software has been created to make copies such as DVD Shrink, DVD Decrypter, and ShrinkTo5.

The restrictions also prevent people from copying DVDs. A number of software programs have since appeared on the Web to view DVDs on a number of different platforms. These laws currently affect only the United States; most other countries can use de-scrambling software to bypass the DVD restrictions. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, on the grounds that such software could also be used to facilitate unauthorized copying of the data on the discs.

This has led to long-running legal battles and the arrest of some of those involved in creating or distributing the DeCSS code, through the use of the controversial U.S. However, a successful effort has been made to write a decoder by reverse engineering, resulting in DeCSS. Proprietary software players were also difficult to find on some platforms. The CSS has caused major problems for the inclusion of DVD players in any open source operating systems, since open source player implementations are not officially given access to the decryption keys or license the patents involved in the CSS.

Usually, users need to install software provided on the DVD or downloaded from the Internet such as WinDVD, PowerDVD, MPlayer, or VLC to be able to view the disc in a computer system. Many DVD-Video titles use content-scrambling system (CSS) encryption, which is intended to discourage people from bypassing the region control mechanism (see below). DVD-Video has four complementary systems designed to restrict the DVD user in various ways: Macrovision, Content Scrambling System (CSS), region codes, and disabled user operations (UOPs). This can include audio commentary that is timed to the film sequence, documentary features, unused footage, trivia text commentary, simple games and film shorts.

A major selling point of DVD Video is that its storage capacity allows for a wide variety of extra features in addition to the feature film itself. Multiple angles have found a niche in pornography though. show different language versions of images containing written text, if subtitles will not do (for instance, credits). If space permits, it is also possible to include several versions (called "angles") of certain scenes, though today this feature is mostly used—if at all—not to show different angles of the action, but as part of internationalization to e.g.

DVD Video may contain Chapters for easy navigation (and continuation of a partially watched film). Subtitles are restricted to four colors (including transparency) and thus tend to look cruder than permanent subtitles on film. The subtitle track is contained within the VOB file of the DVD. They are stored as bitmap images with transparent background which are overlaid over the video during playback.

DVD Video may also include one or more subtitle tracks in various languages, including those made especially for the deaf and hearing impaired. Some HDMI-equipped DVD players can upconvert the video to higher definition formats such as 720p and, more rarely, 1080p. Along with video HDMI also supports up to eight-channel digital audio. HDMI is a new digital connection similar to DVI; it carries High Definition, Enhanced Definition and Standard Definition video.

Some DVD players and set-top boxes offer YPbPr component video signals over the wires in the SCART connector intended for RGB, though this violates the official specification. The analog RGB signal offers video quality which is superior to S-Video though inferior to progressive component video. In Europe (but not most other PAL areas), SCART connectors are typically used, which can carry composite, Y/C (S-Video), and/or analog RGB interlaced video signals, as well as analog two-channel sound on a single convenient multiwire cable. Even worse, there are often two sets of component outputs, one carrying interlaced video, and the other progressive.

The connectors are further confused by using a number of different physical connectors on different player models, RCA or BNC, as well as using VGA cables in a non-standard way (VGA is normally analog RGB—a different, incompatible form of component video). However neither of these connectors were intended to be used for progressive video, so yet another set of connectors has started to appear, to carry a form of component video, which keeps the three components of the video, one luminance signal and two color difference signal, as stored on the DVD itself, on fully separate wires (whereas S-Video uses two wires, uniting and degrading the two color signals, and composite only one, uniting and degrading all three signals). Current players typically output analog video only, both composite video on an RCA jack, as well as S-Video in the standard connector. Video is another issue which continues to present problems.

When playing compact discs, the signal is sent in S/PDIF format instead. The selected audio signal is sent over the connection, typically over RCA connectors or TOSLINK, in its original format to be decoded by the audio equipment. Most systems include an optional digital connector for this task, which is then paired with a similar input on the amplifier. With several channels of audio from the DVD, the cabling needed to carry the signal to an amplifier or TV can occasionally be somewhat frustrating.

In many cases, sound tracks in more than one language track are present (for example, a dubbed track in the language of the country where the disc is sold in addition to one in the film's original language). DVDs can contain more than one channel of audio to go together with the video content. The vast majority of commercial PAL releases employ AC-3 audio by now. most of Europe) the sound of DVD was supposed to be standardized on PCM and MP2, but apparently against the wishes of Philips, under public pressure on December 5, 1997, the DVD Forum accepted the addition of Dolby AC-3 to the optional formats on discs and mandatory formats in players.

Initially, in countries using the PAL standard (e.g. The vast majority of commercial NTSC releases today employ AC-3 audio. This ensures any standard compatible disc can be played on any standard compatible player. In countries using the NTSC standard any movie should contain a sound track in (at least) either PCM or Dolby AC-3 formats, and any NTSC player must support these two; all the others are optional.

The audio data on a DVD movie can be of the format PCM, DTS, MP2, or Dolby Digital (AC-3). A high number of audio tracks and/or lots of extra material on the disc will often result in a lower bit rate (and image quality) for the main feature. The video resolution on NTSC discs is 720 × 480 and on PAL discs is 720 × 576. Typical data rates for DVD movies range from 3–10 Mbit/s, and the bit rate is usually adaptive.

Commercial DVD movies are encoded using a combination of MPEG-2 compressed video and audio of varying formats (often multi-channel formats as described below). a DVD-player or a DVD computer drive with a software DVD player). DVD-Video discs require a DVD-drive with an MPEG-2 decoder (e.g. While this seems a disadvantage, such drives have a lower seek time as they do not have to change the disc's speed of rotation.

(The track starts at the inner circle of the disc and spirals outward.) The average speed of the drive therefore equals only about 50–70% of the maximum nominal speed. The maximum data rate specified for the drive/disc is achieved only at the end of the disc's track. Most current CD and DVD drives have a constant rotation speed (Constant Angular Velocity, or CAV). As linear (meters per second) track speed grows at outer parts of the disc proportionally to the radius, the rotational speed of the disc was adjusted according to which portion of the disc was being read.

The data on the disc is passed under the read head at a constant rate (Constant Linear Velocity, or CLV). Early CD and DVD drives read data at a constant rate. In physical rotation terms (spins per second), one DVD "speed" equals three CD "speeds," so an 8x DVD drive has the same rotational speed as 24x CD drive. As CD drive speeds are given in multiples of 150 KB/s, one DVD "speed" equals nine CD "speeds," so an 8x DVD drive should have a data transfer rate similar to that of a 72x CD drive.

The data transfer rate of a DVD drive is often given in multiples of 1352 KB/s, which means that a drive with 16x speed designation allows a data transfer rate of 16 × 1352 = 21640 KB/s (21.13 MB/s). The reference data rate of DVD is 11.08 Mbps (million bits per second). Unlike compact discs, where sound (CDDA, Red Book) is stored in a fundamentally different fashion than data (Yellow book et al.), a properly authored DVD will always contain data in files readable by both the UDF filesystem and the ISO 9660 filesystem (often called UDF Bridge format). Almost all DVD writers can write both formats and carry both the +RW and DVD-R/RW logos.

Around 90% of DVD readers (drives and player) can read the recordable formats, with DVD-R having the best overall compatibility in independent tests. As of 2005, both formats are equally popular, with about half of the industry supporting "+", and the other half "-". The "+" (plus) and "-" (dash) are similar technical standards and are partially compatible. However, they are readable by most DVD drives, so they are commonly referred to as DVD+R and DVD+RW.

Instead, they display an "RW" logo, even if it is not rewritable, which some consider to be deceptive advertising. Since DVD+R/RW discs are not technically DVDs as per the DVD Forum standards, they are not allowed to display the DVD logo. The DVD Forum created the official DVD-ROM/R/RW/RAM standards and the DVD+RW Alliance created the DVD+R/RW standards. Each medium can contain any of the above content and can be any layer type.

If there is one barcode, there is only one layer. If there are two barcodes, there are two layers on that side. Another way to identify how many layers a DVD contains is to look at the center ring on the data side(s) of the disc. Double-layered sides are usually gold-colored, while single-layered sides are usually silver-colored, like a CD.

The capacity of a DVD-ROM can be visually determined by noting the number of data sides, and looking at the data side, or sides, of the disc. There are also 8 cm DVDs (not mini-DVD, which usually refers to DVD-Video data on a CD) with a disc capacity of 1.5 GB. The disc may have one or two sides, and one or two layers of data per side; the number of sides and layers determines the disc capacity. The disc medium can be:.

There are a variety of application types for DVD:. As a result, the DVD format is 47 percent more efficient with respect to CD-ROM, which uses a "third" error correction layer. There is no subcode as in CD. CD's error correction, CIRC, is replaced by a powerful Reed-Solomon product code, RS-PC; Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation (EFM) is replaced by a more efficient version, EFMPlus, which uses eight-to-sixteen modulation.

DVD uses a more efficient coding method in the physical layer. This holds for two dimensions, so that the actual physical data density increases by a factor of 3.5. By employing a red laser at 650 nm wavelength (compared to 780 nm for CD) and a numerical aperture of 0.6 (compared to 0.45 for CD), the read-out resolution is increased by a factor 1.65. A single-layer DVD can store 4.7 GB, which is around seven times as much as a standard CD-ROM.

The substrates are half as thick as a CD to make it possible to use a lens with a higher numerical aperture and therefore use smaller pits and narrower tracks. Two such discs are glued together to form a 1.2 mm disc that can be designed to be read from one side (single sided) or both sides (double sided). DVDs are made from a 0.6 mm thick disc of polycarbonate plastic coated with a much thinner reflective layer of aluminium or gold. Toshiba, which maintains the official DVD Forum site [1], adheres to the interpretation of "Digital Versatile Disc." The DVD Forum never reached a consensus on the matter, however, and so today the official name of the format is simply "DVD"; the letters do not officially stand for anything.[2].

"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. However, one GameCube model known as the Panasonic Q (sold only in Japan) allows for DVD playback in the GameCube. Nintendo's GameCube ordinarily cannot play DVDs but uses a modified DVD for its game media. Microsoft's Xbox, released a year after the PlayStation 2, also had the capability to play DVD discs with an add-on remote control kit, cementing the DVD's place in video game consoles.

In keeping with this tradition, Sony has announced that it will implement one of DVD's possible successors, Blu-ray, into its next PlayStation console currently known as the PlayStation 3. As a result, many electronic stores that normally did not carry video game consoles carried PS2s. This proved to be a huge selling point because the PS2 cost about the same as standard DVD players but could do much more. In addition to playing video games developed for the system it was also able to play DVD movies.

In 2000, Sony released its PlayStation 2 console in Japan. While the growth of theatrical films on DVD has cooled recently, that of television programs and music video has increased dramatically. In comparison, the total 2004 US box office for theatrical rentals was $9.53 billion (per the National Association of Theater Owners or NATO). The sales portion of that was $15.5 billion.

According to the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), all DVD sales and rentals (films, television series, special interests, etc) totaled $21.2 billion in 2004. However, blank VHS tapes are still widely available since DVD video recorders are significantly less common than DVD players. 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. retailers Circuit City and Best Buy stopped selling VHS tapes in 2002 and 2003, respectively.

Major U.S. 27.3 M rentals VHS). DVD rentals first topped those of VHS during the week of June 15, 2003 (27.7 M rentals DVD vs. Most, but not all, movie "sets" or series have been released in box sets, as have some entire seasons or selected episode volumes of older and newer television programs.

The price of a DVD player has dropped to below the level of a typical VCR (although DVD recorders are still significantly more expensive than VCRs); a low-end player with reasonable quality can be purchased for under $50 US in many retail stores and many modern computers are sold with DVD-ROM drives. As of 2006 the situation is reversed; DVDs make up the bulk and VHS is a slim minority. 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 movies made up the remainder. By the spring of 1999 the price of a DVD player had dropped below $300 US.

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. The movie had the first test for 2.1 surround sound. The first pressed DVD was the movie Twister in 1996. 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 result was the DVD specification Version 1.0, announced in 1995 and finalized in September 1996. The great advantage of EFMPlus is its great resilience against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints. EFMPlus, created by Kees Immink, who also designed EFM, is 6% less efficient than Toshiba's SD code, which resulted in a capacity of 4.7GB instead of SD's original 5GB. The second modification was the adoption of Philips' EFMPlus.

The first one was the adoption of a pit geometry that allows "push-pull" tracking, a proprietary Philips/Sony technology. Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba's SD format with two modifications that are both related to the servo tracking technology. 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. 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.

. The official DVD specification is maintained by the DVD Forum. DVDs resemble compact discs as their physical dimensions are the same (12 cm or occasionally 8 cm in diameter) but they are encoded in a different format and at a much higher density. DVD (sometimes known as "Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc") is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality.

DVD-18: double sided, double layer on both sides, 17.1 GB (15.9 GiB). DVD-14: double sided, double layer on one side, single layer on other, 13.3 GB (12.3 GiB). DVD-10: double sided, single layer on both sides, 9.4 GB (8.75 GiB). DVD-9: single sided, double layer, 8.5 GB (7.92 GiB).

DVD-5: single sided, single layer, 4.7 gigabytes (GB), or 4.38 gibibytes (GiB). DVD+RW DL: dual layer rewritable. DVD-RW DL: dual layer rewritable. DVD+R DL: dual layer record once.

DVD-R DL: dual layer record once. DVD+RW: rewritable. DVD+R: recordable once. DVD-RAM: random access rewritable.

DVD-RW: rewritable. DVD-R: recordable once. DVD-ROM: read only, manufactured by a press. DVD-Data (containing data).

Xbox DVD (containing games for Xbox). PS2 DVD (containing games for PlayStation 2). DVD+VR (a variation of DVD-Video used for recording on +R and +RW discs). DVD-VR (containing recorded video and sound, usually from TV or camcorder).

SACD (containing high-definition sound). DVD-Audio (containing high-definition sound). DVD-Video (containing movies (video and sound)).