HD DVD
Encyclopedia
HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc
format for storing data and high-definition video
.
Supported principally by Toshiba
, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD
format. However, in February 2008, after a protracted high definition optical disc format war
with rival Blu-ray Disc
, Toshiba abandoned the format, announcing it would no longer develop or manufacture HD DVD players or drives. However, the HD DVD physical disk specifications (but not the codec
s) are still in use as the basis for the CBHD (China Blue High-Definition Disc) formerly called CH-DVD. The HD DVD Promotion Group was dissolved on March 28, 2008.
Because all variants except 3× DVD and HD REC employed a blue laser
with a shorter wavelength, HD DVD could store about 3.2 times as much data per layer as its predecessor (maximum capacity: 15 GB per layer instead of 4.7 GB per layer).
's D-VHS
and Sony
's HDCAM
formats could store that amount of data, but were neither popular nor well-known. However, it was well known that using lasers with shorter wavelengths would yield optical storage with higher density. Shuji Nakamura
invented practical blue laser diodes
, however, a lengthy patent lawsuit delayed commercial introduction.
(Ultra Density Optical) and DVR Blue together with Philips, a format of rewritable discs which would eventually become Blu-ray Disc (more specifically, BD-RE) and later on with Pioneer a format of read only discs (BD-ROM). The two formats share several technologies (such as the AV codecs and the laser diode). In February 2002, the project was officially announced as Blu-ray Disc
, and the Blu-ray Disc Association
was founded by the nine initial members.
The DVD Forum
(which was chaired by Toshiba
) was deeply split over whether to go with the more expensive blue lasers or not. Although today's Blu-ray Discs appear virtually identical to a standard DVD, when the Blu-ray Discs were initially developed they required a protective caddy
to avoid mis-handling by the consumer. (Early CD-Rs also featured a protective caddy for the same purpose.) The Blu-ray Disc prototype's caddy was both expensive and physically different from DVD, posing several problems. In March 2002, the forum voted to approve a proposal endorsed by Warner Bros.
and other motion picture studios that involved compressing HD content onto dual-layer DVD-9 discs. However, in spite of this decision, the DVD Forum's Steering Committee announced in April that it was pursuing its own blue-laser high-definition solution. In August, Toshiba and NEC announced their competing standard Advanced Optical Disc. It was adopted by the DVD forum and renamed to HD DVD the next year.
The HD DVD Promotion Group was a group of manufacturers and media studios formed to exchange thoughts and ideas to help promote the format worldwide. Its members comprised Toshiba Corporation as the Chair Company and Secretary, Memory-Tech Corporation and NEC Corporation as Vice-Chair companies, and Sanyo
Electric as Auditors; there were 61 general members and 72 associate members in total. The HD DVD promotion group was officially dissolved on March 28, 2008, following Toshiba's announcement on February 19, 2008 that it would no longer develop or manufacture HD DVD players and drives.
vs. Betamax
videotape format war
during the late 1970s and early 1980s, HD DVD was competing with rival format Blu-ray Disc
. In 2008, major content manufacturers and key retailers began withdrawing their support for the format.
In an attempt to avoid a costly format war, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum attempted to negotiate a compromise in early 2005. One of the issues was that Blu-ray Disc companies wanted to use a Java-based platform for interactivity (BD-J
based on Sun Microsystems
' Java TV standards), while HD DVD companies wanted to use Microsoft
's "iHD" (which became HDi). Another problem was the physical formats of the discs themselves. The negotiations proceeded slowly and ultimately stalled.
On August 22, 2005, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum announced that the negotiations to unify their standards had failed. Rumors surfaced that talks had stalled; publicly, the same reasons of physical format incompatibility were cited. By the end of September that year, Microsoft and Intel jointly announced their support for HD DVD.
Hewlett Packard (HP) attempted to broker a compromise between the Blu-ray Disc Association and Microsoft by demanding that Blu-ray Disc use Microsoft's HDi instead of BD-J and threatening to support HD DVD instead. However, the Blu-ray Disc Association did not agree to HP's demands.
110,000 (US$
934),. HD DVD was released in the United States on April 18, 2006, with players priced at $499 and $799.
The first HD DVD titles were released on April 18, 2006. They were The Last Samurai
, Million Dollar Baby
, and The Phantom of the Opera
by Warner Home Video
and Serenity
by Universal Studios
. The first independent HD film released on HD DVD was One Six Right
.
.
On April 18, 2007, one year after the first HD DVD titles were released, the HD DVD group reported that they had sold 100,000 dedicated HD DVD units in the United States.
In the middle of 2007, the first HD DVD Recorders were released in Japan.
In November 2007, the Toshiba HD-A2 was the first high definition player to be sold at a sale price of less than US$100; this was done through several major retailers to make room for the new HD-A3 models. These closeout sales lasted less than a day each due to both limited quantities and high demand at that price point. In the same month, the HD DVD promotion group announced that 750,000 HD DVD players had been sold, which included stand-alone players and the Xbox 360 add-on.
In January 2008 Toshiba announced that close to one million dedicated HD DVD players had been sold.
As of June 24, 2008, 475 HD DVD titles had been released in the USA. As of April 29, 2008, 236 HD DVD titles had been released in Japan.
announced it would stop supporting HD DVD by June 2008, and the company would release HD titles only on Blu-ray Disc. This was followed by news of Netflix
phasing out support for the format, and Best Buy
's decision to recommend Blu-ray Disc over HD DVD in its retail locations and to remove HD DVD players as part of its ongoing "HDTV advantage" promotion. Finally, retailer Wal-Mart
announced that it would be supporting only Blu-ray Disc by June 2008. On February 19, 2008, Toshiba
announced plans to discontinue development, marketing and manufacturing of HD DVD players while still providing product support and after-sale service to consumers of the format (including Firmware updates). The company cited "recent major changes in the market". Shipments of HD DVD machines to retailers were reduced and eventually stopped by the end of March 2008.
, Warner's P.S. I Love You
and Twister, on May 27, 2008. In June, the final HD DVD to be released was Freedom: 6
from Bandai Visual. Bandai Visual acknowledged the demise of HD DVD, but stated that it wanted to complete the release of the seven-part Freedom Project
, of which six parts were released. The seventh part, due for August 2008, never saw a release. Disco Pigs
was announced but postponed, with no new date announced for release.
Death Proof
was released on HD DVD format by Senator Films in Germany on December 15, 2008. This special release also was a steelbook.
On April 3, 2010, tech blog site Engadget
reported that Anthem films would release the film Deadlands 2: Trapped on HD DVD in a limited run of 500 copies. This eventually happened in the form of an HD DVD-R. Deadlands: The Rising announced on September 5, 2010 was released on HD DVD for a limited copies. Just like previous released on Deadlands 2: Trapped, the film was pressed on HD DVD-R disc.
On May 30, 2010, MCB Entertainment announced that the first 100 copies of Smokers would be released as fully packaged, professionally manufactured HD DVDs with the appropriate cases and inserts. As of today, "Smokers" has no firm release date yet.
4.95 each plus US$
6.95 shipping to the continental United States or $ 8.95 to Alaska, Hawaii or Puerto Rico. The deal required the HD DVD's original sleeve art to be returned to Warner as a proof of purchase. The turn-around time for processing was approximately two weeks. Multi-disc sets were exchangeable at a discount, e.g. $ 14.95 for the 5-disc Blade Runner
release, rather than $ 24.75. No exchanges were offered to customers outside of the US.
, and a dual-layer capacity of 30 GB
. HD DVD-RAM has a single-layer capacity of 20 GB. Like the original DVD format, the data layer of an HD DVD is 0.6 mm below the surface to physically protect the data layer from damage. The numerical aperture
of the optical pick-up head is 0.65, compared with 0.6 for DVD. All HD DVD players are backward compatible with DVD and CD.
s, such as ISO 9660
and Universal Disk Format
(UDF). All HD DVD titles use UDF version 2.5 as the file system. In this file system, multiplexed audio and video streams are stored in EVO
container format.
All HD DVD players are required to decode uncompressed linear PCM, Dolby Digital
AC-3, Dolby Digital EX, DTS, Dolby Digital Plus
E-AC-3 and Dolby TrueHD
. A secondary soundtrack, if present, can be stored in any of the aforementioned formats, or in one of the HD DVD optional codecs: DTS-HD High Resolution Audio
and DTS-HD Master Audio
. For the highest-fidelity audio experience, HD DVD offers content-producers the choice of LPCM, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
, AVC
, or MPEG-2
. A wide variety of resolutions are supported, from low-resolution CIF
, all SDTV resolutions supported by DVD-Video
, and HDTV formats: 720p
, 1080i
, and 1080p
. All studio-released movie titles have featured video in a 1080-line format, with companion supplements in 480i
or 480p
. The vast majority of releases were encoded with VC-1
, and most of the remaining titles encoded with AVC.
. It is developed by AACS Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA), a consortium
that includes Disney
, Intel, Microsoft
, Matsushita (Panasonic), Warner Bros.
, IBM
, Toshiba
and Sony
. One of the advantages over CSS
, the content restriction system for DVDs, is that AACS allows content providers to revoke an individual player device if its cryptographic keys have been compromised (meaning that it will not be able to decrypt subsequently released content). There is no Region Coding in the existing HD DVD specification, which means that titles from any country can be played in players in any other country.
Since appearing in devices in 2006, several successful attacks have been made on the format. The first known attack relied on the trusted client
problem. In addition, decryption keys have been extracted from a weakly protected player (WinDVD
). Notably, a Processing Key was found that could be used to decrypt all HD content that had been released at the time. The processing key was widely published on the Internet after it was found and the AACS LA sent multiple DMCA takedown
notices in the aim of censoring it. This caused trouble on some sites that rely on user-submitted content, like Digg
and Wikipedia
, when administrators tried to remove any mentions of the key.
AACS has also been circumvented by SlySoft
with their program AnyDVD
HD, which allows users to watch HD DVD movies on non-HDCP-compliant PC hardware. Slysoft has stated that AnyDVD HD uses several different mechanisms to disable the encryption, and is not dependent on the use of a single compromised encryption key.
Other AACS circumvention programs have become available, like DVDFab HD Decrypter.
to allow interactive content to be authored for discs. Microsoft's implementation of Advanced Content is the HDi Interactive Format, and "HDi" is frequently used to refer to the Advanced Content system. Advanced Content is based on web technologies such as HTML
, XML
, CSS
, SMIL
, and ECMAScript
(JavaScript
), so authoring in Advanced Content should be a fairly easy transition for web developers. No existing DVD authoring experience is required. In comparison Blu-ray Disc content is authored using either a scripting environment (BDMV) or a Java-based platform (BD-J
). DVD video discs use pre-rendered MPEG segments, selectable subtitle pictures, and simple programmatic navigation which is considerably more limited.
is available with all HD DVD players, allowing users to have a single player to play all types of HD DVD, DVD and CD. There is also a hybrid HD DVD format which contains both DVD and HD DVD versions of the same movie on a single disc, providing a smooth transition for the studios in terms of publishing movies, and allowing consumers with only DVD players to still use the discs. DVD replication companies can continue using their current production equipment with only minor alterations when changing over to the format of HD DVD replication. Due to the structure of the single-lens optical head, both red and blue laser diodes can be used in smaller, more compact HD DVD players.
, Windows Vista
, Mac OS X v10.5
"Leopard", and many varieties of Linux
. Third-party player software for Windows and Linux have successfully played HD DVD titles using the add-on drive.
Released at the end of November 2006, the Microsoft
HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360
game-console gives the Xbox 360 the ability to play HD DVD movies. The drive was announced with an MSRP
of US$199 and includes a USB 2.0 cable for connection to the console. The first drives also included Peter Jackson's King Kong
or Batman Begins
on HD DVD. The final "regular" for the drive was US$129.99 as of February 25, 2008. On February 23, 2008 Microsoft discontinued the Xbox 360 HD DVD player. On February 26, 2008, Microsoft "officially" announced that the Xbox 360 HD DVD add on drive would reflect a heavily discounted price down to $49.99.
and Samsung
released standalone consumer players that could read both HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs. The machines were sold at premium prices, but failed to sell in large quantities. In May 2008, both companies announced they would stop manufacturing dual-compatibility drives.
A few computer manufacturers (such as HP
and Acer) sold computers with combination HD DVD/Blu-ray Disc drives.
. Both formats were designed as successors to DVD
, capable of higher quality video and audio playback, and of greater capacity when used to store video, audio, and computer data. Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD share most of the same methods of encoding media onto disks with each other, resulting in equivalent levels of audio and visual quality, but differ in other aspects such as interactive capabilities, internet integration, usage control and enforcement, and in which features were mandatory for players. The storage size also varies: A dual-layer HD DVD holds a maximum of 30 GB of data, while a dual-layer Blu-ray Disc carries 50 GB.
At the CES
2007, Ritek revealed their high definition optical disc process that extended both competing high definition formats to ten layers, increasing capacity to 150 GB for HD DVD and 250 GB for Blu-ray Disc. However, a major obstacle to implementing this technology in either format (150 GB HD DVD will not be developed due to HD DVD's discontinuation) is that reader-writer technology available may not be able to support the additional data layers.
NEC
, Broadcom
, Horizon Semiconductors
, and STMicroelectronics
have separately developed a single chip/laser that can read both the HD DVD and the Blu-ray Disc standard. Broadcom and STMicroelectronics will be selling their dual-format single chip/laser solution to any OEM
willing to develop a product based on the chip.
The Toshiba SD-L902A for notebooks was one of the first available HD DVD writers, although it was not meant for retail. Burning HD DVD (including Dual Layer) with a 1× write speed, it could also burn DVDs and CDs. In a test of the SD-L902A by C't computer magazine
with Verbatim
discs, the written HD DVD-Rs suffered from high noise levels; as a result, the written discs could not be recognized by the external HD DVD drive of the Xbox 360, though they could be read back by the SD-L902A.
HD DVD-RW is the rewritable disc variant of HD DVD with equal storage capacity to an HD DVD-R. The primary advantage of HD DVD-RW over HD DVD-R is the ability to erase and rewrite to an HD DVD-RW disc, up to about 1,000 times before needing replacement, making them comparable with the CD-RW
and DVD-RW
standards. This is also of benefit if there are writing errors when recording data, as the disc is not ruined and can still store data by erasing the faulty data.
HD DVD-RAM was the proposed successor to DVD-RAM for random access on optical media using phase-change principals. It would hold 20 gigabytes per layer instead of 15 gigabytes for HD DVD-R, due to differences in recording methods used, yielding a higher density disc.
format video for playback in regular DVD players, and HD DVD video for playback in high definition on HD DVD players. The Combo disc is a dual sided disc with one side DVD and the other HD DVD, each of which can have up to two layers. The Twin disc is a single sided disc that can have up to three layers, with up to two layers dedicated to either DVD or HD DVD. These hybrid discs make retail marketing and shelf space management easier. Another advantage is hardware cross-compatibility. The average consumer does not have to worry about whether or not they can play a hybrid DVD: any standard home DVD player can access the DVD-encoded content and any HD DVD player can access both the DVD- and HD DVD-encoded content.
(THD or Total HD) at CES 2007
. THD hybrid discs were to support both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc, with HD DVD on one side (up to two layers) and Blu-ray Disc on the other side (up to two layers). However, in November 2007, Warner Bros. cancelled THD's development.
.
3× DVDs are physically identical to normal DVDs. Although 3× DVDs provide the same high definition content, their playback time is less. For example, an 8.5 GB DVD can hold about 90 minutes of 1080p video encoded with VC-1 or AVC at an average bitrate of 12 Mbit/s, which corresponds with the average length of Hollywood feature-films. If quality is compromised slightly, and good compression techniques are used, most feature films could be encoded with 3x DVD. Due to its much greater resolution, HD-Video also has significantly more redundant information than DVD which newer compression standards can encode more efficiently.
It is technically possible for consumers to create HD DVD compatible discs using low cost DVD-R or DVD+R media. At least one such guide exists. The 3× DVD is comparable to Blu-ray Disc BD5 and BD9 formats.
compression. It was approved by the DVD Forum
on September 12, 2007 It is comparable to Blu-ray Disc's AVCREC.
Optical disc
In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc is a flat, usually circular disc which encodes binary data in the form of pits and lands on a special material on one of its flat surfaces...
format for storing data and high-definition video
High-definition video
High-definition video or HD video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1,280×720 pixels or 1,920×1,080 pixels...
.
Supported principally by Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
format. However, in February 2008, after a protracted high definition optical disc format war
High definition optical disc format war
A format war took place between the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD optical disc standards for storing high definition video and audio.These standards emerged between 2000 and 2002 and attracted both the mutual and exclusive support of major consumer electronics manufacturers, personal computer...
with rival Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
, Toshiba abandoned the format, announcing it would no longer develop or manufacture HD DVD players or drives. However, the HD DVD physical disk specifications (but not the codec
Codec
A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of "compressor-decompressor" or, more commonly, "coder-decoder"...
s) are still in use as the basis for the CBHD (China Blue High-Definition Disc) formerly called CH-DVD. The HD DVD Promotion Group was dissolved on March 28, 2008.
Because all variants except 3× DVD and HD REC employed a blue laser
Blue laser
A so-called blue laser is a laser that emits electromagnetic radiation at a wavelength of between 360 and 480 nanometres, which the human eye sees as blue or violet. Diode lasers which emit light at 445 nm are becoming popular as handheld lasers. Light of a shorter wavelength than 400 nm is...
with a shorter wavelength, HD DVD could store about 3.2 times as much data per layer as its predecessor (maximum capacity: 15 GB per layer instead of 4.7 GB per layer).
History
In the mid 1990s, commercial HDTV sets started to enter a larger market. However, there was no inexpensive way to record or play back HD content. JVCJVC
, usually referred to as JVC, is a Japanese international consumer and professional electronics corporation based in Yokohama, Japan which was founded in 1927...
's D-VHS
D-VHS
D-VHS is a digital recording format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. The "D" in D-VHS originally stood for Data VHS, but with the expansion of the format from standard definition to high definition capability, JVC renamed it Digital VHS and uses that...
and Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
's HDCAM
HDCAM
HDCAM, introduced in 1997, is an High-definition video digital recording videocassette version of Digital Betacam, using an 8-bit DCT compressed 3:1:1 recording, in 1080i-compatible downsampled resolution of 1440×1080, and adding 24p and 23.976 PsF modes to later models...
formats could store that amount of data, but were neither popular nor well-known. However, it was well known that using lasers with shorter wavelengths would yield optical storage with higher density. Shuji Nakamura
Shuji Nakamura
is a professor at the Materials Department of the College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara .- Career :Nakamura graduated from the University of Tokushima in 1977 with a degree in electronic engineering, and obtained a master's degree in the same subject two years later, after...
invented practical blue laser diodes
Blue laser
A so-called blue laser is a laser that emits electromagnetic radiation at a wavelength of between 360 and 480 nanometres, which the human eye sees as blue or violet. Diode lasers which emit light at 445 nm are becoming popular as handheld lasers. Light of a shorter wavelength than 400 nm is...
, however, a lengthy patent lawsuit delayed commercial introduction.
Origins and competition from Blu-ray Disc
Sony started two projects applying the new diodes: UDOUltra Density Optical
Ultra Density Optical is an optical disc format designed for high-density storage of high-definition video and data.- Overview :...
(Ultra Density Optical) and DVR Blue together with Philips, a format of rewritable discs which would eventually become Blu-ray Disc (more specifically, BD-RE) and later on with Pioneer a format of read only discs (BD-ROM). The two formats share several technologies (such as the AV codecs and the laser diode). In February 2002, the project was officially announced as Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
, and the Blu-ray Disc Association
Blu-ray Disc Association
The Blu-ray Disc Association is the industry consortium that develops and licenses Blu-ray Disc technology and is responsible for establishing format standards and promoting business opportunities for Blu-ray Disc...
was founded by the nine initial members.
The DVD Forum
DVD Forum
The DVD Forum is an international organization composed of hardware, software, media and content companies that use and develop the DVD and formerly HD DVD formats...
(which was chaired by Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
) was deeply split over whether to go with the more expensive blue lasers or not. Although today's Blu-ray Discs appear virtually identical to a standard DVD, when the Blu-ray Discs were initially developed they required a protective caddy
Caddy (hardware)
In computer hardware, a caddy refers to a sheath used to hold some media.If the medium is a hard disk drive, the caddy is also referred to as a disk enclosure, which is discussed there...
to avoid mis-handling by the consumer. (Early CD-Rs also featured a protective caddy for the same purpose.) The Blu-ray Disc prototype's caddy was both expensive and physically different from DVD, posing several problems. In March 2002, the forum voted to approve a proposal endorsed by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
and other motion picture studios that involved compressing HD content onto dual-layer DVD-9 discs. However, in spite of this decision, the DVD Forum's Steering Committee announced in April that it was pursuing its own blue-laser high-definition solution. In August, Toshiba and NEC announced their competing standard Advanced Optical Disc. It was adopted by the DVD forum and renamed to HD DVD the next year.
The HD DVD Promotion Group was a group of manufacturers and media studios formed to exchange thoughts and ideas to help promote the format worldwide. Its members comprised Toshiba Corporation as the Chair Company and Secretary, Memory-Tech Corporation and NEC Corporation as Vice-Chair companies, and Sanyo
Sanyo
is a major electronics company and member of the Fortune 500 whose headquarters is located in Moriguchi, Osaka prefecture, Japan. Sanyo targets the middle of the market and has over 230 Subsidiaries and Affiliates....
Electric as Auditors; there were 61 general members and 72 associate members in total. The HD DVD promotion group was officially dissolved on March 28, 2008, following Toshiba's announcement on February 19, 2008 that it would no longer develop or manufacture HD DVD players and drives.
Attempts to avoid a format war
Much like the VHSVHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
vs. Betamax
Betamax
Betamax was a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional wide, U-matic format...
videotape format war
Videotape format war
The videotape format war was a period of intense competition or "format war" of incompatible models of consumer-level analog video videocassette and video cassette recorders in the late 1970s and the 1980s.- Overview :...
during the late 1970s and early 1980s, HD DVD was competing with rival format Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
. In 2008, major content manufacturers and key retailers began withdrawing their support for the format.
In an attempt to avoid a costly format war, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum attempted to negotiate a compromise in early 2005. One of the issues was that Blu-ray Disc companies wanted to use a Java-based platform for interactivity (BD-J
BD-J
BD-J, or Blu-ray Disc Java, is a specification supporting Java ME Xlets for advanced content on Blu-ray Disc and the Packaged Media profile of Globally Executable MHP .BD-J allows bonus content on Blu-ray Disc titles to be far more sophisticated than bonus content provided by standard DVD,...
based on Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
' Java TV standards), while HD DVD companies wanted to use Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's "iHD" (which became HDi). Another problem was the physical formats of the discs themselves. The negotiations proceeded slowly and ultimately stalled.
On August 22, 2005, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum announced that the negotiations to unify their standards had failed. Rumors surfaced that talks had stalled; publicly, the same reasons of physical format incompatibility were cited. By the end of September that year, Microsoft and Intel jointly announced their support for HD DVD.
Hewlett Packard (HP) attempted to broker a compromise between the Blu-ray Disc Association and Microsoft by demanding that Blu-ray Disc use Microsoft's HDi instead of BD-J and threatening to support HD DVD instead. However, the Blu-ray Disc Association did not agree to HP's demands.
Launch
On March 31, 2006 Toshiba released their first consumer-based HD DVD player in Japan at ¥Japanese yen
The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third most traded currency in the foreign exchange market after the United States dollar and the euro. It is also widely used as a reserve currency after the U.S. dollar, the euro and the pound sterling...
110,000 (US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
934),. HD DVD was released in the United States on April 18, 2006, with players priced at $499 and $799.
The first HD DVD titles were released on April 18, 2006. They were The Last Samurai
The Last Samurai
The Last Samurai is a 2003 American epic drama film directed and co-produced by Edward Zwick, who also co-wrote the screenplay based on a story by John Logan. The film was inspired by a project developed by writer and director Vincent Ward, who had previously filmed the movie in 1990, starring...
, Million Dollar Baby
Million Dollar Baby
Million Dollar Baby is a 2004 American sports drama film directed, co-produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood and starring Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman...
, and The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera (2004 film)
The Phantom of the Opera is a 2004 film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical of the same name, which in turn was based on the French novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux....
by Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video is the home video unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Video . The company launched in the United States with twenty films on VHS and Betamax videocassettes in late 1979...
and Serenity
Serenity (film)
Serenity is a 2005 space western film written and directed by Joss Whedon. It is a continuation of the short-lived 2002 Fox science fiction television series Firefly, taking place after the events of the final episode. Set in 2518, Serenity is the story of the captain and crew of a cargo ship...
by Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
. The first independent HD film released on HD DVD was One Six Right
One Six Right
One Six Right: The Romance of Flying is an independent film about the general aviation industry as seen through a local airport. Within a short period of time, it has achieved a passionate following and presence among pilots and aviation enthusiasts worldwide who see the film as being able to...
.
Sales developments
In December 2006 Toshiba reported that roughly 120,000 Toshiba branded HD DVD players had been sold in the United States, along with 150,000 HD DVD add-on units for the Xbox 360Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
.
On April 18, 2007, one year after the first HD DVD titles were released, the HD DVD group reported that they had sold 100,000 dedicated HD DVD units in the United States.
In the middle of 2007, the first HD DVD Recorders were released in Japan.
In November 2007, the Toshiba HD-A2 was the first high definition player to be sold at a sale price of less than US$100; this was done through several major retailers to make room for the new HD-A3 models. These closeout sales lasted less than a day each due to both limited quantities and high demand at that price point. In the same month, the HD DVD promotion group announced that 750,000 HD DVD players had been sold, which included stand-alone players and the Xbox 360 add-on.
In January 2008 Toshiba announced that close to one million dedicated HD DVD players had been sold.
As of June 24, 2008, 475 HD DVD titles had been released in the USA. As of April 29, 2008, 236 HD DVD titles had been released in Japan.
Decline
On January 4, 2008, citing consumer confusion and indifference as a reason for lackluster high-definition software sales, Warner Bros.Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
announced it would stop supporting HD DVD by June 2008, and the company would release HD titles only on Blu-ray Disc. This was followed by news of Netflix
Netflix
Netflix, Inc., is an American provider of on-demand internet streaming media in the United States, Canada, and Latin America and flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States. The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California...
phasing out support for the format, and Best Buy
Best Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...
's decision to recommend Blu-ray Disc over HD DVD in its retail locations and to remove HD DVD players as part of its ongoing "HDTV advantage" promotion. Finally, retailer Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
announced that it would be supporting only Blu-ray Disc by June 2008. On February 19, 2008, Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
announced plans to discontinue development, marketing and manufacturing of HD DVD players while still providing product support and after-sale service to consumers of the format (including Firmware updates). The company cited "recent major changes in the market". Shipments of HD DVD machines to retailers were reduced and eventually stopped by the end of March 2008.
End of releases
The final HD DVD releases in the United States from a major studio were Paramount's Into the WildInto the Wild (film)
Into the Wild is a 2007 American biographical drama film directed by Sean Penn. It is an adaptation of 1996 non-fiction book of the same name by Jon Krakauer based on the travels of Christopher McCandless across North America in the early 1990s. The film stars Emile Hirsch as McCandless with...
, Warner's P.S. I Love You
P.S. I Love You (film)
P.S. I Love You is a 2007 American drama film directed by Richard LaGravenese. The screenplay by LaGravenese and Steven Rogers is based on the 2004 novel of the same name by Cecelia Ahern. The film is dedicated to the memory of producer Molly Smith's sister Windland Smith Rice.-Plot:Holly and Gerry...
and Twister, on May 27, 2008. In June, the final HD DVD to be released was Freedom: 6
Freedom Project
Freedom Project is a Japanese promotional project by Nissin Cup Noodles for their 35th anniversary in 2006. As part of the project, the 7-part OVA series, titled Freedom, was commissioned with and designed by Katsuhiro Otomo serving as the character and mecha designer...
from Bandai Visual. Bandai Visual acknowledged the demise of HD DVD, but stated that it wanted to complete the release of the seven-part Freedom Project
Freedom Project
Freedom Project is a Japanese promotional project by Nissin Cup Noodles for their 35th anniversary in 2006. As part of the project, the 7-part OVA series, titled Freedom, was commissioned with and designed by Katsuhiro Otomo serving as the character and mecha designer...
, of which six parts were released. The seventh part, due for August 2008, never saw a release. Disco Pigs
Disco Pigs
Disco Pigs is a 2001 Irish film directed by Kirsten Sheridan and written by Enda Walsh, who adapted it from his 1996 play of the same name. Cillian Murphy and Elaine Cassidy star as Cork teenagers who have a lifelong, but unhealthy, friendship that is imploding as they approach adulthood.-Plot:The...
was announced but postponed, with no new date announced for release.
Death Proof
Death Proof
Death Proof is a 2007 American action thriller film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film centers on a psychopathic stunt man who stalks young women before murdering them in staged car accidents using his "death-proof" stunt car...
was released on HD DVD format by Senator Films in Germany on December 15, 2008. This special release also was a steelbook.
On April 3, 2010, tech blog site Engadget
Engadget
Engadget is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. Though on appearance Engadget functions much like a blog and may be defined as such, much of its editorial content takes the form of an online magazine...
reported that Anthem films would release the film Deadlands 2: Trapped on HD DVD in a limited run of 500 copies. This eventually happened in the form of an HD DVD-R. Deadlands: The Rising announced on September 5, 2010 was released on HD DVD for a limited copies. Just like previous released on Deadlands 2: Trapped, the film was pressed on HD DVD-R disc.
On May 30, 2010, MCB Entertainment announced that the first 100 copies of Smokers would be released as fully packaged, professionally manufactured HD DVDs with the appropriate cases and inserts. As of today, "Smokers" has no firm release date yet.
Warner providing Blu-ray Disc replacements in the US
In mid-2009, Warner, through its Red2Blu.com site, offered to replace any HD DVD Warner home video release with a Blu-ray Disc equivalent for US$United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
4.95 each plus US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
6.95 shipping to the continental United States or $ 8.95 to Alaska, Hawaii or Puerto Rico. The deal required the HD DVD's original sleeve art to be returned to Warner as a proof of purchase. The turn-around time for processing was approximately two weeks. Multi-disc sets were exchangeable at a discount, e.g. $ 14.95 for the 5-disc Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
release, rather than $ 24.75. No exchanges were offered to customers outside of the US.
Technical specifications
The current specification books for HD DVD are listed at the DVD FLLC website.Disc structure
HD DVD-ROM, HD DVD-R and HD DVD-RW have a single-layer capacity of 15 GBGigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
, and a dual-layer capacity of 30 GB
Gigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
. HD DVD-RAM has a single-layer capacity of 20 GB. Like the original DVD format, the data layer of an HD DVD is 0.6 mm below the surface to physically protect the data layer from damage. The numerical aperture
Numerical aperture
In optics, the numerical aperture of an optical system is a dimensionless number that characterizes the range of angles over which the system can accept or emit light. By incorporating index of refraction in its definition, NA has the property that it is constant for a beam as it goes from one...
of the optical pick-up head is 0.65, compared with 0.6 for DVD. All HD DVD players are backward compatible with DVD and CD.
| Physical size | Single layer capacity | Dual layer capacity |
|---|---|---|
| 12 cm, single sided | 15 GB | 30 GB |
| 12 cm, double sided | 30 GB | 60 GB |
| 8 cm, single sided | 4.7 GB | 9.4 GB |
| 8 cm, double sided | 9.4 GB | 18.8 GB |
Recording speed
| Drive speed | Data rate | Write time for HD DVD (minutes) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mbit/s | MB/s | Single Layer | Dual Layer | |
| 1× | 36 | 4.5 | 56 | 110 |
| 2× | 72 | 9 | 28 | 55 |
File systems
As with previous optical disc formats, HD DVD supports several file systemFile system
A file system is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the...
s, such as ISO 9660
ISO 9660
ISO 9660, also referred to as CDFS by some hardware and software providers, is a file system standard published by the International Organization for Standardization for optical disc media....
and Universal Disk Format
Universal Disk Format
Universal Disk Format is an implementation of the specification known as ISO/IEC 13346 and ECMA-167 and is an open vendor-neutral file system for computer data storage for a broad range of media. In practice, it has been most widely used for DVDs and newer optical disc formats, supplanting ISO 9660...
(UDF). All HD DVD titles use UDF version 2.5 as the file system. In this file system, multiplexed audio and video streams are stored in EVO
Enhanced VOB
An EVO file is a container format contained in HD DVD video media. It contains the actual video, audio, subtitle and menu contents in stream form. It is an extension to VOB, which is an extension to MPEG program stream...
container format.
Audio
The HD DVD format supports encoding in up to 24-bit/192 kHz for two channels, or up to eight channels of up to 24-bit/96 kHz encoding.All HD DVD players are required to decode uncompressed linear PCM, Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. It was originally called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints...
AC-3, Dolby Digital EX, DTS, Dolby Digital Plus
Dolby Digital Plus
Dolby Digital Plus is a digital audio compression scheme. It is an incompatible development of the technologies used in the earlier Dolby Digital system. E-AC-3 has a number of improvements aimed at increasing quality at a given bitrate compared with legacy Dolby Digital...
E-AC-3 and Dolby TrueHD
Dolby TrueHD
Dolby TrueHD is an advanced lossless multi-channel audio codec developed by Dolby Laboratories which is intended primarily for high-definition home-entertainment equipment such as Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. It is the successor to the AC-3 Dolby Digital surround sound codec which was used as the...
. A secondary soundtrack, if present, can be stored in any of the aforementioned formats, or in one of the HD DVD optional codecs: DTS-HD High Resolution Audio
Digital Theater System
DTS is a series of multichannel audio technologies owned by DTS, Inc. , an American company specializing in digital surround sound formats used for both commercial/theatrical and consumer grade applications...
and DTS-HD Master Audio
DTS-HD Master Audio
DTS-HD Master Audio is a lossless audio codec created by Digital Theater System. It was previously known as DTS++. It is an extension of DTS which, when played back on devices which do not support the Master Audio or High Resolution extension, degrades to a "core" track which is lossy. DTS-HD...
. For the highest-fidelity audio experience, HD DVD offers content-producers the choice of LPCM, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
Video
HD DVD video can be encoded using VC-1VC-1
VC-1 is the informal name of the SMPTE 421M video codec standard, which was initially developed as a proprietary video format by Microsoft before it was released as a formal SMPTE standard video format on April 3, 2006...
, AVC
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC is a standard for video compression, and is currently one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of high definition video...
, or MPEG-2
MPEG-2
MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...
. A wide variety of resolutions are supported, from low-resolution CIF
Common Intermediate Format
CIF , also known as FCIF , is a format used to standardize the horizontal and vertical resolutions in pixels of YCbCr sequences in video signals, commonly used in video teleconferencing systems. It was first proposed in the H.261 standard.CIF was designed to be easy to convert to PAL or NTSC...
, all SDTV resolutions supported by DVD-Video
DVD-Video
DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVD discs, and is currently the dominant consumer video format in Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia. Discs using the DVD-Video specification require a DVD drive and a MPEG-2 decoder...
, and HDTV formats: 720p
720p
720p is the shorthand name for 1280x720, a category of High-definition television video modes having a resolution of 1080 or 720p and a progressive scan...
, 1080i
1080i
1080i is the shorthand name for a high-definition television mode. The i means interlaced video; 1080i differs from 1080p, in which the p stands for progressive scan. The term 1080i assumes a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9, implying a frame size of 1920×1080 pixels...
, and 1080p
1080p
1080p is the shorthand identification for a set of HDTV high-definition video modes that are characterized by 1080 horizontal lines of resolution and progressive scan, meaning the image is not interlaced as is the case with the 1080i display standard....
. All studio-released movie titles have featured video in a 1080-line format, with companion supplements in 480i
480i
480i is the shorthand name for a video mode, namely the US NTSC television system or digital television systems with the same characteristics. The i, which is sometimes uppercase, stands for interlaced, the 480 for a vertical frame resolution of 480 lines containing picture information; while NTSC...
or 480p
480p
480p is the shorthand name for a video display resolution. The p stands for progressive scan, i.e. non-interlaced. The 480 denotes a vertical resolution of 480 pixel high vertically scanning lines, usually with a horizontal resolution of 640 pixels and 4:3 aspect ratio or a horizontal resolution of...
. The vast majority of releases were encoded with VC-1
VC-1
VC-1 is the informal name of the SMPTE 421M video codec standard, which was initially developed as a proprietary video format by Microsoft before it was released as a formal SMPTE standard video format on April 3, 2006...
, and most of the remaining titles encoded with AVC.
Digital rights management
If a publisher wishes to restrict use of their HD DVD content, they may use the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) although this is not required for normal disc playback. AACS is a standard for content distribution and digital rights managementDigital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
. It is developed by AACS Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA), a consortium
Consortium
A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal....
that includes Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
, Intel, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, Matsushita (Panasonic), Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
and Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
. One of the advantages over CSS
Content Scramble System
Content Scramble System is a Digital Rights Management and encryption system employed on almost all commercially produced DVD-Video discs. CSS utilizes a proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm...
, the content restriction system for DVDs, is that AACS allows content providers to revoke an individual player device if its cryptographic keys have been compromised (meaning that it will not be able to decrypt subsequently released content). There is no Region Coding in the existing HD DVD specification, which means that titles from any country can be played in players in any other country.
Since appearing in devices in 2006, several successful attacks have been made on the format. The first known attack relied on the trusted client
Trusted client
In computing, a trusted client is a device or program controlled by the user of a service, but with restrictions designed to prevent its use in ways not authorised by the provider of the service. That is, the client is a device that vendors trust and then sell to the consumers, whom they do not trust...
problem. In addition, decryption keys have been extracted from a weakly protected player (WinDVD
WinDVD
WinDVD is a commercial video player and music player software for Microsoft Windows. It enables the viewing of DVD-Video movies on the user's PC. DVD-Video backups stored on hard disk can also be played...
). Notably, a Processing Key was found that could be used to decrypt all HD content that had been released at the time. The processing key was widely published on the Internet after it was found and the AACS LA sent multiple DMCA takedown
Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act
The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act is United States federal law that creates a conditional safe harbor for online service providers and other Internet intermediaries by shielding them for their own acts of direct copyright infringement as well as...
notices in the aim of censoring it. This caused trouble on some sites that rely on user-submitted content, like Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
and Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, when administrators tried to remove any mentions of the key.
AACS has also been circumvented by SlySoft
SlySoft
SlySoft Inc. is a software company located in St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda. Its products consist of software to back up and convert digital media, including CDs, DVDs, HD DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs, as well as copy and back up optical media and render PC-based games playable without the...
with their program AnyDVD
AnyDVD
AnyDVD is a Microsoft Windows driver allowing decryption of DVDs on-the-fly, as well as targeted removal of copy preventions and user operation prohibitions . With an upgrade, it will also do the same for HD DVD and Blu-ray. The AnyDVD program runs in the background, making discs unrestricted and...
HD, which allows users to watch HD DVD movies on non-HDCP-compliant PC hardware. Slysoft has stated that AnyDVD HD uses several different mechanisms to disable the encryption, and is not dependent on the use of a single compromised encryption key.
Other AACS circumvention programs have become available, like DVDFab HD Decrypter.
Interactive content
HD DVDs use Advanced ContentAdvanced Content
Advanced Content provides interactivity in the HD DVD optical disc format.Advanced Content is used to provide interactive menus and "special features" such as additional bonus/extras content and games for HD DVD...
to allow interactive content to be authored for discs. Microsoft's implementation of Advanced Content is the HDi Interactive Format, and "HDi" is frequently used to refer to the Advanced Content system. Advanced Content is based on web technologies such as HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
, XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
, CSS
Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...
, SMIL
Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
SMIL , the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, is a W3C recommended XML markup language for describing multimedia presentations. It defines markup for timing, layout, animations, visual transitions, and media embedding, among other things...
, and ECMAScript
ECMAScript
ECMAScript is the scripting language standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification and ISO/IEC 16262. The language is widely used for client-side scripting on the web, in the form of several well-known dialects such as JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript.- History :JavaScript...
(JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
), so authoring in Advanced Content should be a fairly easy transition for web developers. No existing DVD authoring experience is required. In comparison Blu-ray Disc content is authored using either a scripting environment (BDMV) or a Java-based platform (BD-J
BD-J
BD-J, or Blu-ray Disc Java, is a specification supporting Java ME Xlets for advanced content on Blu-ray Disc and the Packaged Media profile of Globally Executable MHP .BD-J allows bonus content on Blu-ray Disc titles to be far more sophisticated than bonus content provided by standard DVD,...
). DVD video discs use pre-rendered MPEG segments, selectable subtitle pictures, and simple programmatic navigation which is considerably more limited.
Compatibility
Backward compatibilityBackward compatibility
In the context of telecommunications and computing, a device or technology is said to be backward or downward compatible if it can work with input generated by an older device...
is available with all HD DVD players, allowing users to have a single player to play all types of HD DVD, DVD and CD. There is also a hybrid HD DVD format which contains both DVD and HD DVD versions of the same movie on a single disc, providing a smooth transition for the studios in terms of publishing movies, and allowing consumers with only DVD players to still use the discs. DVD replication companies can continue using their current production equipment with only minor alterations when changing over to the format of HD DVD replication. Due to the structure of the single-lens optical head, both red and blue laser diodes can be used in smaller, more compact HD DVD players.
General purpose computers
HD DVD drives can also be used with a desktop/laptop personal computer (PC) running Windows XPWindows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
, Windows Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
, Mac OS X v10.5
Mac OS X v10.5
Mac OS X Leopard is the sixth major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on 26 October 2007 as the successor of Tiger , and is available in two variants: a desktop version suitable for personal computers, and a...
"Leopard", and many varieties of Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
. Third-party player software for Windows and Linux have successfully played HD DVD titles using the add-on drive.
Released at the end of November 2006, the Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
game-console gives the Xbox 360 the ability to play HD DVD movies. The drive was announced with an MSRP
Suggested retail price
The manufacturer's suggested retail price , list price or recommended retail price of a product is the price which the manufacturer recommends that the retailer sell the product. The intention was to help to standardise prices among locations...
of US$199 and includes a USB 2.0 cable for connection to the console. The first drives also included Peter Jackson's King Kong
King Kong (2005 film)
King Kong is a 2005 fantasy adventure film directed by Peter Jackson. It is a remake of the 1933 film of the same name and stars Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody. Andy Serkis, through performance capture, portrays Kong....
or Batman Begins
Batman Begins
Batman Begins is a 2005 American superhero action film based on the fictional DC Comics character Batman, directed by Christopher Nolan. It stars Christian Bale as Batman, along with Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson,...
on HD DVD. The final "regular" for the drive was US$129.99 as of February 25, 2008. On February 23, 2008 Microsoft discontinued the Xbox 360 HD DVD player. On February 26, 2008, Microsoft "officially" announced that the Xbox 360 HD DVD add on drive would reflect a heavily discounted price down to $49.99.
Dual-compatibility drives
In 2007, LGLG
LG may refer to:*LG Corp., a South Korean electronics and petrochemicals conglomerate*LG Electronics, an affiliate of the South Korean LG Group which produces electronic products* Lawrence Graham, a London headquartered firm of business lawyers...
and Samsung
Samsung
The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...
released standalone consumer players that could read both HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs. The machines were sold at premium prices, but failed to sell in large quantities. In May 2008, both companies announced they would stop manufacturing dual-compatibility drives.
A few computer manufacturers (such as HP
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
and Acer) sold computers with combination HD DVD/Blu-ray Disc drives.
HD DVD / Blu-ray Disc comparison
HD DVD competed primarily with Blu-ray DiscBlu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
. Both formats were designed as successors to DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, capable of higher quality video and audio playback, and of greater capacity when used to store video, audio, and computer data. Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD share most of the same methods of encoding media onto disks with each other, resulting in equivalent levels of audio and visual quality, but differ in other aspects such as interactive capabilities, internet integration, usage control and enforcement, and in which features were mandatory for players. The storage size also varies: A dual-layer HD DVD holds a maximum of 30 GB of data, while a dual-layer Blu-ray Disc carries 50 GB.
Development
Even after finalizing the HD DVD standard, engineers continued developing the technology. A 51 GB triple-layer spec was approved at the DVD Forums 40th Steering Committee Meeting (held on November 15, 2007). However, no movies had been scheduled for this disc type, and Toshiba had declined to say whether the 51 GB disc was compatible with existing drives and players. Specification 2.0 Part 1 (Physical Specification) for triple layer HD DVD had been approved in November 2007.At the CES
Consumer Electronics Show
The International Consumer Electronics Show is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new...
2007, Ritek revealed their high definition optical disc process that extended both competing high definition formats to ten layers, increasing capacity to 150 GB for HD DVD and 250 GB for Blu-ray Disc. However, a major obstacle to implementing this technology in either format (150 GB HD DVD will not be developed due to HD DVD's discontinuation) is that reader-writer technology available may not be able to support the additional data layers.
NEC
NEC
, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
, Broadcom
Broadcom
Broadcom Corporation is a fabless semiconductor company in the wireless and broadband communication business. The company is headquartered in Irvine, California, USA. Broadcom was founded by a professor-student pair Henry Samueli and Henry T. Nicholas III from the University of California, Los...
, Horizon Semiconductors
Horizon Semiconductors
Horizon Semiconductors is a provider of integrated silicon solutions that enable the secured delivery of voice, video, data and multimedia to and throughout the home, the office and the mobile environment, serving the Consumer Electronics, Broadcast, Broadband Communication and home entertainment...
, and STMicroelectronics
STMicroelectronics
STMicroelectronics is an Italian-French electronics and semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.While STMicroelectronics corporate headquarters and the headquarters for EMEA region are based in Geneva, the holding company, STMicroelectronics N.V. is registered in Amsterdam,...
have separately developed a single chip/laser that can read both the HD DVD and the Blu-ray Disc standard. Broadcom and STMicroelectronics will be selling their dual-format single chip/laser solution to any OEM
Original Equipment Manufacturer
An original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, manufactures products or components that are purchased by a company and retailed under that purchasing company's brand name. OEM refers to the company that originally manufactured the product. When referring to automotive parts, OEM designates a...
willing to develop a product based on the chip.
HD DVD-R / -RW / -RAM
HD DVD-R is the writable disc variant of HD DVD, available with a single-layer capacity of 15 GB or a dual-layer capacity of 30 GB. Write speeds depend on drive speed, with a data rate of 36.55 Mbit/s (4.36 MB/s) and a recording time of 56 minutes for 1× media, and 73 Mbit/s (8.71 MB/s) and a recording time of 28 minutes for 2×.The Toshiba SD-L902A for notebooks was one of the first available HD DVD writers, although it was not meant for retail. Burning HD DVD (including Dual Layer) with a 1× write speed, it could also burn DVDs and CDs. In a test of the SD-L902A by C't computer magazine
C't
c't – Magazin für Computertechnik is a German computer magazine, published by the Heinz Heise publishing house. Originally a special section of the electronics magazine elrad, the magazine has been published monthly since December 1983 and biweekly since October 1997...
with Verbatim
Verbatim Corporation
Verbatim Americas, LLC is a US company that markets storage media and flash memory products. It is a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation of Japan and is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.-History:...
discs, the written HD DVD-Rs suffered from high noise levels; as a result, the written discs could not be recognized by the external HD DVD drive of the Xbox 360, though they could be read back by the SD-L902A.
HD DVD-RW is the rewritable disc variant of HD DVD with equal storage capacity to an HD DVD-R. The primary advantage of HD DVD-RW over HD DVD-R is the ability to erase and rewrite to an HD DVD-RW disc, up to about 1,000 times before needing replacement, making them comparable with the CD-RW
CD-RW
A CD-RW is a rewritable optical disc. It was introduced in 1997, and was known as "CD-Writable" during development. It was preceded by the CD-MO, which was never commercially released....
and DVD-RW
DVD-RW
A DVD-RW disc is a rewritable optical disc with equal storage capacity to a DVD-R, typically 4.7 GB. The format was developed by Pioneer in November 1999 and has been approved by the DVD Forum. The smaller Mini DVD-RW holds 1.46 GB, with a diameter of 8 cm.The primary advantage of DVD-RW over...
standards. This is also of benefit if there are writing errors when recording data, as the disc is not ruined and can still store data by erasing the faulty data.
HD DVD-RAM was the proposed successor to DVD-RAM for random access on optical media using phase-change principals. It would hold 20 gigabytes per layer instead of 15 gigabytes for HD DVD-R, due to differences in recording methods used, yielding a higher density disc.
DVD / HD DVD hybrid discs
There are two types of hybrid formats which contain standard DVD-VideoDVD-Video
DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVD discs, and is currently the dominant consumer video format in Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia. Discs using the DVD-Video specification require a DVD drive and a MPEG-2 decoder...
format video for playback in regular DVD players, and HD DVD video for playback in high definition on HD DVD players. The Combo disc is a dual sided disc with one side DVD and the other HD DVD, each of which can have up to two layers. The Twin disc is a single sided disc that can have up to three layers, with up to two layers dedicated to either DVD or HD DVD. These hybrid discs make retail marketing and shelf space management easier. Another advantage is hardware cross-compatibility. The average consumer does not have to worry about whether or not they can play a hybrid DVD: any standard home DVD player can access the DVD-encoded content and any HD DVD player can access both the DVD- and HD DVD-encoded content.
HD DVD / Blu-ray Disc hybrid discs
Warner Bros. officially announced Total Hi DefTotal Hi Def
Total Hi Def Disc, also called Total HD or THD, was a planned optical disc format that included both of the rival high-definition optical disc formats, Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. It was officially announced January 8, 2007 at the Warner Bros. press conference held at CES 2007...
(THD or Total HD) at CES 2007
Consumer Electronics Show
The International Consumer Electronics Show is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new...
. THD hybrid discs were to support both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc, with HD DVD on one side (up to two layers) and Blu-ray Disc on the other side (up to two layers). However, in November 2007, Warner Bros. cancelled THD's development.
3× DVD
The HD DVD format also applies to current red laser DVDs; this type of disc is called "3× DVD", as it is capable of three times the bandwidth of regular DVD-VideoDVD-Video
DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVD discs, and is currently the dominant consumer video format in Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia. Discs using the DVD-Video specification require a DVD drive and a MPEG-2 decoder...
.
3× DVDs are physically identical to normal DVDs. Although 3× DVDs provide the same high definition content, their playback time is less. For example, an 8.5 GB DVD can hold about 90 minutes of 1080p video encoded with VC-1 or AVC at an average bitrate of 12 Mbit/s, which corresponds with the average length of Hollywood feature-films. If quality is compromised slightly, and good compression techniques are used, most feature films could be encoded with 3x DVD. Due to its much greater resolution, HD-Video also has significantly more redundant information than DVD which newer compression standards can encode more efficiently.
It is technically possible for consumers to create HD DVD compatible discs using low cost DVD-R or DVD+R media. At least one such guide exists. The 3× DVD is comparable to Blu-ray Disc BD5 and BD9 formats.
HD REC
HD Rec is an extension of the HD DVD format for recording HD content on regular red laser DVD-Rs/DVD-RWs using H.264/MPEG-4 AVCH.264/MPEG-4 AVC
H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC is a standard for video compression, and is currently one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of high definition video...
compression. It was approved by the DVD Forum
DVD Forum
The DVD Forum is an international organization composed of hardware, software, media and content companies that use and develop the DVD and formerly HD DVD formats...
on September 12, 2007 It is comparable to Blu-ray Disc's AVCREC.
CBHD
The China Blue High-Definition (CBHD), a high-definition optical disc format, was originally based upon the HD DVD format. Like the HD DVD, CBHD discs have a capacity of 15GB single-layer and 30GB dual-layer and can use existing DVD production lines. Unlike the HD DVD format, industry support for this format has grown steadily.See also
- List of HD DVD devices
- List of released HD DVD titles
- Comparison of high definition optical disc formatsComparison of high definition optical disc formatsThis article compares the technical specifications of multiple high definition formats, including HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc; two mutually incompatible, high definition optical disc formats that, beginning in 2006, attempted to improve upon and eventually replace the DVD standard...
- Format warFormat warA format war describes competition between mutually incompatible proprietary formats that compete for the same market, typically for data storage devices and recording formats for electronic media. It is often characterized by political and financial influence on content publishers by the...
- High definition optical disc format warHigh definition optical disc format warA format war took place between the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD optical disc standards for storing high definition video and audio.These standards emerged between 2000 and 2002 and attracted both the mutual and exclusive support of major consumer electronics manufacturers, personal computer...
- CBHD Based on HD DVD technology.
- Dolby Digital PlusDolby Digital PlusDolby Digital Plus is a digital audio compression scheme. It is an incompatible development of the technologies used in the earlier Dolby Digital system. E-AC-3 has a number of improvements aimed at increasing quality at a given bitrate compared with legacy Dolby Digital...
, one of the mandatory audio codecs for HD DVD hardware. - 1080p1080p1080p is the shorthand identification for a set of HDTV high-definition video modes that are characterized by 1080 horizontal lines of resolution and progressive scan, meaning the image is not interlaced as is the case with the 1080i display standard....
, high-definition resolution supported by HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. - MUSE LD – an earlier optical disc which contained analog HDTV signals
- D-VHSD-VHSD-VHS is a digital recording format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. The "D" in D-VHS originally stood for Data VHS, but with the expansion of the format from standard definition to high definition capability, JVC renamed it Digital VHS and uses that...
– a tape-based format that allows recording of 720 or 1080 high-def DTV, while remaining compatible with older VHS libraries - Advanced Interactivity ConsortiumAdvanced Interactivity ConsortiumThe Advanced Interactivity Consortium is an open forum designed to extend the Advanced Content interactive capabilities of HD DVD to new devices and delivery mechanisms....
- DVD ForumDVD ForumThe DVD Forum is an international organization composed of hardware, software, media and content companies that use and develop the DVD and formerly HD DVD formats...
- Blu-ray DiscBlu-ray DiscBlu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
- HD NVDHD NVDHD NVD Is a Chinese High definition standard created to compete with Blu-ray discs. The standard uses a red laser like the one used in DVD and CD players whereas Blu-ray uses a blue laser. This standard allows the Chinese companies to avoid paying royalties to foreign companies for the manufacture...
Alternative disc technologies
- Blu-ray DiscBlu-ray DiscBlu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
- Fluorescent Multilayer DiscFluorescent Multilayer DiscFluorescent Multilayer Disc was an optical disc format developed by Constellation 3D that uses fluorescent, rather than reflective materials to store data. Reflective disc formats have a practical limitation of about two layers, primarily due to interference, scatter, and inter-layer cross talk...
- Digital Multilayer DiskDigital Multilayer DiskDigital Multilayer Disk is an optical disc format developed by D Data Inc. It is based on the 3D optical data storage technology developed for the Fluorescent Multilayer Disc by the defunct company Constellation 3D. DMDs can store between 22 and 32 GB of binary information...
- High-Definition Versatile DiscHigh-Definition Versatile DiscHigh-Definition Versatile Disc is an Asian standard of advanced high-definition technology originally developed in China by AMLogic Inc., for high-definition video. The format resolutions support 720p, 1080i, or 1080p on version 1 discs...
- Holographic Versatile DiscHolographic Versatile DiscThe Holographic Versatile Disc is an optical disc technology developed between April 2004 and mid-2008 that can store up to several terabytes of data on an optical disc the same size as a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc. It employs a technique known as collinear holography, whereby a green and red laser...
– a proposed next-generation disc after HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc - 3D optical data storage3D optical data storage3D optical data storage is the term given to any form of optical data storage in which information can be recorded and/or read with three dimensional resolution ....
– another next-generation technology - Ultra Density OpticalUltra Density OpticalUltra Density Optical is an optical disc format designed for high-density storage of high-definition video and data.- Overview :...
- AVCHDAVCHDAVCHD is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video....
- Enhanced Versatile DiscEnhanced Versatile DiscThe Enhanced Versatile Disc is an optical medium-based digital audio/video format, developed to provide a means for playing HDTV content using existing optical media. It was announced on November 18, 2003, by the People's Republic of China's Xinhua News Agency as a response to the popular...
(EVD) - Forward Versatile DiscForward Versatile DiscFVD, or Forward Versatile Disc, is an offshoot ofDVD developed in Taiwan jointly by the Advanced Optical Storage Research Alliance and the Industrial Technology Research Institute as a less expensive alternative for high-definition content...
(FVD) - Professional Disc for DATAProfessional Disc for DATAProfessional Disc is a digital recording optical disc format introduced by Sony in 2003 primarily for XDCAM, its new tapeless camcorder system...
(PDD or ProDATA) - Versatile Multilayer DiscVersatile Multilayer DiscVersatile Multilayer Disc is a high-capacity red laser optical disc technology designed by New Medium Enterprises, Inc....
- LS-RLS-RLS-R, or the Layer-Selection-Type Recordable Optical Disk, is the term coined by Hitachi in 2003 for a next-generation optical disc technology which allows much larger data storage densities than DVD, HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc, by allowing the use of a large number of data layers in a single disc...
– a "layer selection" technology designed to allow large numbers of data layers in one disc.