DVD Technology Essay

It is truly a fact that we are living in this modern world which all technologies are advanced and improved. One of these technologies is in the DVD technology. Before, we normally used CDs as main novelty to the PC’s world but now, DVD is more used and preferred by multitudes of masses due to its admirable features which the CD doesn’t have. DVD was formerly represented as Digital Video Disc but then changed into Digital Versatile Disc and is considered as the next generation of the optical disc storage technology which is predicted and awaited to quickly substitute the CD-ROM disc along with audio compact disc around the following several years. DVD contains 4. 7 information’s gigabytes on one of its both sides or sufficient for a 133-minute movie. Having two layers on every of its both sides, it will keep up to 17 gigabytes of audio, video and other data. DVD-Video is the typical term for the DVD format designed for full-length motion pictures and which will drive with our television set. The DVD-ROM keeps computer information and is read through a DVD-ROM drive which is connected to a computer, the DVD-RAM is the writeable version while the DVD-Audio is a player which is designed to substitute our compact disc player (see Bellis, Mary. â€Å"DVD†. http://inventors. about. com/library/inventors/bldvd. htm). A DVD with correctly structured and formatted video substance is a DVD-Video. The DVDs with correct structured and formatted audio are termed as DVD-Audio discs. And everything as well is named as a DVD-Data disc as well as the other types of DVD discs which have video (Wikipedia, free encyclopedia. August 27, 2006). The purposes of this study are to: (1) know the history of DVD technology; and (2) be acquainted with its useful features and its functions; and how it is being distinct from CD. History The invention of DVD was all started in early of 1990s which two high-density optical storage standards were being technology advanced: the first one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc which was supported by Sony and Philips; and the second one was the Super Density disc which was approved and accepted by Time-Warner, Hitachi, Pioneer, JVC, Mitsubishi Electric, Toshiba, Thomson, and Matsushita Electric. The IBM president named Lou Gertsner has exerted an effort to join and bring together the two companies to back up solitary standard, getting ahead a repeat of the expensive and inflated format war amongst Betamax and VHS in 1980s (Wikipedia, free encyclopedia. August 27, 2006). In 1994 of May, Philips and Sony promulgated that they would be willingly and jointly develop a newfangled high-density medium popularly known as Digital Video Disc or DVD. This new technology was considered as the successor to compact discs or CD-ROM for computers and substitute laserdiscs and VHS tapes in the amusement industry. Just like a CD, DVD discs have similar diameter-about 120mm and thickness is about 1. 2 mm- just as Compact disc has but DVD is more advance and useful due to its capability to use both discs’ sides for data storage. The large video games which need and require a number of CDs would merely necessitate only one DVD disc. Later on, newfangled technology’s development instantaneously induced dilemmas of a political nature. The Warner Home Entertainment and Toshiba declared their own project to work out the same but yet precisely distinct from DVD technology at the same time. Associations like the Hollywood Digital Video Disc Advisory Group had a sensible and rational interest in this technology’s development. Movie suppliers started to stir up disagreements and controversies which concern the essential of copy protections in the DVD requirement and description. But then, Sony was the first to display its DVD technology. In 1995, John Eargle explained and illustrated the presentation which was conducted at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show. In his writings entitled â€Å"The Great DVD debate† stated that: â€Å"its color and sharpness was more than a match for the Laserdisc â€Å". But Eargle’s attention was on the technological requirements which had been formally and legitimately promulgated in December of the same year. The DVD’s intensification and enlargement data density was credited to a laser of a color advanced in the light spectrum and a technology that were being technologically advanced with 3M which permit the laser to be focus again to one second â€Å"layer† in the disc. It has a double-layer disc which amplifies the volume and dimensions to 7. 4 gigabytes. Throughout the spring of 1995, the disagreement of both developers had been stimulated through Toshiba’s personal growth and advancement of a two-layer disc named as SD or Super density (Chapin, R. â€Å"History of DVD†). DVD recordable and rewritable DVD recordable and DVD rewritable denote to DVD optical disc formats which can be â€Å"burned† either rewritable or write once format. DVD recordable is an overall name which denotes to both rewritable and writes-once formats, while DVD writable denotes solely to rewritable formats. The DVD promoted and marketed as 4. 7 GB might seem to keep not more than that for the reason that manufacturers quote the volume of a writable DVD disc utilizing decimal prefixes instead of the binary prefixes utilized by number of software. On the other hand, a 4. 7 GB DVD can be able to accumulate 4. 7 billion bytes, utilizing the binary prefixes which has similar capacity is approximately 4. 38 GiB (Wikipedia, free encyclopedia. August 18, 2006). Dual Layer Recording Dual Layer recoding permits DVD-R and DVD+R discs to accumulate and put in storage extensively more info or data which is capable of 8. 5 Gigabytes per disc, when contrasted with 4. 7 Gigabytes designed for single-layer discs. The DVD-R DL or â€Å"dual layer† was technologically advanced for the DVD Forum by the Pioneer Corporation while the DVD+R DL or â€Å"dual layer† was technologically advanced intended for the DVD+RW Alliance by Sony. Below are the two figures of DVD-R DL and DVD+R DL (Wikipedia, free encyclopedia. August 28, 2006). Figure of DVD-R DL Double Layer DVD+R Its Restrictions The DVD-Video includes four corresponding systems designed to limit and constraint the DVD user in a variety of procedures and these are the Content Scrambling System, Region codes, disabled user operations (UOP) and Macrovision. *Content Scrambling System* > It is a Digital Rights Management or DRM plan make used on various DVDs. It make uses a weak, proprietary 40 bit stream cipher algorithm which has successively been compromised. It was in 1996 that the system was presented and established (wikipedia, free encyclopedia. August 26, 2006). *Region Codes* > it is the programming practice, chip, physical barrier, or code which is make used to stop or block the playing media designed for a device which comes from a place where it is introduced and distributed on the version of similar device distributed in another place. It is a kind of a form of vendor lock-in (Wikipedia, free encyclopedia. August 26, 2006). *Disabled User Operations* > DVD-Video permits the disc to identify or indicate whether or not the handler may carry out any operation like skipping chapters, rewinding or forwarding, selecting a menu which is fundamentally any function on the remote control. This system is named as Prohibited User Operations or User Operation Prohibitions. *Macrovision* > It is a company which makes electronic prevention plans and was established in 1963. The term is occasionally used to denote to specific video copy prevention plans which were technologically advanced by the company. Its features Some of the DVDs main features are: (1) copy protection built into standard; (2) DVD-ROM for improved multimedia and games applications; (3) every format uses a common file system; (4) DVD-Audio for advanced quality music, graphics and other features and surround sound and optical video and many others; (5) Backwards compatibility with current CD media and many others (see DVD (Digital Versatile Disk)†. http://www. usbyte. com/common/dvd. htm#Introduction). Hence, DVD it is widely used now globally. ______________________________________________________________________________ References: 1. Bellis, Mary. â€Å"DVD†. http://inventors. about. com/library/inventors/bldvd. htm) 2. †DVD†. August 28, 2006. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/DVD 3. Chapin, R. â€Å"History of DVD†. http://www. miqrogroove. com/writing/History%20of%20DVD. html 4. â€Å"DVD recordable†. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. August 18, 2006http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/DVD_recordable 5. â€Å"Content Scramble System†. August 26, 2006. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Content_Scrambling_System 6. â€Å"DVD (Digital Versatile Disk)†. http://www. usbyte. com/common/dvd. htm#Introduction