High Capacity Discs and HD on DVD

The DVD was introduced in 1997. DVDs and DVD production have had considerable impact on the entertainment industry. Home theater equipment sales boom while theater attendance declines. DVD release dates are often as important to movie studios as theatrical release dates.

The advent of the HD capacity DVD and production on Sony’s Blu-ray Discs, for playback on HDTV, now provides double the resolution of the conventional DVD whether replicated or burned to DVD-R, DVD+R, and rewritable discs..

Because the Federal government has decreed the end of analog television within just a few years, HD DVDs will continue to gain importance. Blu-ray Disc and its competitor, HD DVD, are each completely compatible with stand definition DVD software. Recording and playback of HD DVD is accomplished with a blue laser instead of the red laser used on conventional discs.

DVD Storage Reaches 50 Terabytes of Data

The DVD is going through many changes. In addition to making a shift to high definition, it's material characteristics are also changing. The original DVD could hold anywhere from 4 to 8 GB of information depending on whether it was single or dual sided. With the introduction of Blu-Ray Disc’s and HD DVD’s, disk capacity shot up from the theoretical 15 GB limit to an astounding 50 GB of data.

In response to a seemingly insatiable demand for ever greater DVD capacity, a professor at the Harvard Medical School developed a DVD format whose storage capacity exceeds that of of Blu-Ray and HD DVD’s combined. This DVD is coated with a light sensitive protein and can be used to store up to 50 terabytes of data. This is equivalent to 50,000 gigabytes worth of information.