The beginning of the DVD as we know it History has a way of repeating itself thus just like Beta/VHS before the development that ultimately lead to the DVD as we know it started out as two different and incompatible formats in May 1994. On the one side was the Multimedia CD developed by Philips and Sony, on the other side was the Super Density (SD) disc developed by Toshiba and Warner Home Entertainment. These new medians would have a data capacity that was five to ten times that of a CD while maintaining the same form factor of a CD. Due to the increased capacity this infant technology would replace, in the entertainment realm, laser-discs and VHS tapes and, in the computer realm, CD's.

One year later in 1995 with two waring formats it would take something big to make the two side work together, that something was a consortium formed of several rather large hardware and software manufacturers including Microsoft, Fujitsu, IBM, Apple and Compaq. This consortium known as the Technical Working Group, or TWG did not wishing for a repeat of what happened with Betamax/VHS in the 1980s thus they refused collectively to support ether of the dueling formats. It was this action that was ultimately responsible for the merging of the two competing formats.

1996 saw copy protection (css) introduced shortly before the first DVD players were sold in Tokyo sometime in November; it was not until August of 1997, three years since development started that DVDs became available in the U.S.. It was not until 1998 the DVDs were available in Europe, and 1999 for Australia

Whiskers

Bibliography

Chapin, Robert History of DVD Retrieved June 10 2009 from the World Wide Web:http://www.miqrogroove.com/writing/History of DVD.html

Passein, Corrado DVD History Retrieved June 11 2009 from the World Wide Web:http://e-articles.info/e/a/title/DVD-History/

Retrieved June 11 2009 from the World Wide Web:http://standartdvd.com/