Future of the DVD

Any form of storage media never remained permanent in this world due to rapid technological advancement. It has been a long time since gramophone discs were widely used for music, and then it was the audio tapes and VHS video tapes. For data storage there were floppy disks and then the hard disk drive. Digital media became immense popular with the advent of the CD (compact disc) and most recently the DVD (digital versatile disc). Today, we have portable hard disks and thumb drives which utilize the convenience and benefits of USB data transfer.

The future of the DVD is now heading in two directions – Blu Ray and HD-DVD. Blu Ray is a format developed by Sony where as HD-DVD is a format developed by Toshiba. Seldom have we seen such a situation in the past, where the media and entertainment industry fails to agree and adopt a common standard. HD-DVD claims to have a big advantage in terms of the manufacturing process. The major Hollywood studios Warner Brothers and Paramount have announced the availability of movies in both formats. In recent times Microsoft and Intel have declared their loyalty to HD-DVD where as HP has been rooting for certain changes in the Blu Ray standard. Both discs are capable of storing about 40-50GB of data. The key issue to decide on the popularity of the formats will be the price at which their hardware and software products are launched by the end of this year.