The moment one mentions the word DVD, we immediatelyimagine those discs that contain films or movies (as they are popularly known). By the way, many of us lose program Discs (CDs and DVDs) because some people have their minds set that, any CD or DVD contains music or movie; they will “borrow” any disc at the slightest opportunity. The term DVD, a.k.a. “Digital Versatile Disc” or “Digital Video Disc is the technical definition of the abbreviation “DVD”. To some extent, you could have Digital Video on hard Disks or other media rather than on Discs, hence the latter term may not be as good as the former in describing our subject; nevertheless, we shall just settle for the abbreviation for convenience’s sake. Many of you will agree with me that, this device is relatively new in our lives, it has widely become very popular in the last five or so years. I am not trying to discourage any of you from acquiring a set of DVD system for you home entertainment but the truth is that, the DVD has almost become obsolete, yes, it is the technology of yesterday. Already, we have the HD-DVD as well as the Blu-ray discs. HD DVD a.k.a. High Definition Digital Versatile Disc, was based on the Advanced Optical Disc (AOD) technology pioneered by both Toshiba and NEC, this technology employed a blue-violet laser that read pits half the size of a DVD on tracks packed tighter together, like its successor, the Blu-ray, HD DVD supported the more advanced H.264 and VC-1 video codecs as well as 1080p resolution. These had a capacity of about 350% that of the DVD.An advantage for media manufacturer was that, unlike Blu-ray, which requires new disc machinery, traditional DVD stamping machines needed only minor modificationsto make them HD DVD compatible. The first HD DVD drives were distributed in the USA around 2006, as a result of it launching, Microsoft offered the drive as an option for its X-BOX game machine. In spite of its features and initial support, in 2008, the majority of movie studios and retail outlets chose Blu-ray over HD DVD, marking the end of the format war between Toshiba and Sony; as a result, this marked the “premature death of the HD DVD”. The Blu-ray Disc (BD), this is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers(this is considered to be omorrow’stechnology). A typical ordinary Blu-ray disc can hold up to 25 GB (gigabyteof content), while a Dual later one holds double that size.Since our subject for today’s discussion is the DVD, we shall look at these other technologies another time. A DVD is similarto a conventional CD a.k.a. Compact Disc, but has a much higher data storage capacity (1:7). This increased capacity means that, the DVD can hold not only more content but also more details (in movies). When we look at movie or picture quality, we normally considerthe concentration of Dots per Inch (DPI), the higher the DPI, the better the quality. Imagine a whole movie fitted on just two normal CDs (VCD) yet, the same movie can be fitted on one DVD, and this would have much more details because of the extended space. This is the reason you find a DVD containing items like: several languages,background to the film, e.t.c. A typical contents of a DVD movie runs for up to 133 minuteson a high resolution video format, with a scan format of 720 dpi employing the MPEG-2 compression, the soundtracks being presented in up to six or more languages using 5.1 channelDolby digital surround sound, including Subtitles in up to 24 languages. The same media can be used to store up to 1400 songs in the MP3 format, with each song As compared to the VHS tapes of yesteryears, the DVD picture quality is superb, and most DVDs have Dolby Digital sound, which is gives you the true life sound effects as you would experience in a theatre. The DVD contents are stored in chapters, you can randomly move from one chapter to the other with the touch of a button as compared to a VHS tape that plays serially (from beginning to end). Email : eddie@afrowebs.com
