Technology, Data Recovery, Cell Phones, Latest Gadgets, Game Reviews

High definition DVD, also known as HD-DVD (which actually stands for High Density
DVD), is one of two competing high definition storage format - the other being Blu-ray.

The need for a
new, high capacity storage format, has been primarily brought about by the rapid
rise in popularity of HDTV in Japan and the US. HDTV has much higher bandwidth
than either NTSC or regular DVD discs, so in order to record programs from HD-
DVD higher capacity discs, of at least 30GB, are required.

High definition video is also being used increasingly to make Hollywood movies as it
offers comparable quality to film at much less cost. Therefore, the studios plan to
release future movies on one or both high definition formats.

HD-DVD was developed by Toshiba and NEC and has the support of the DVD Forum,
along with a number of Hollywood studios. Currently those studios which have
announced support for HD-DVD are; Universal Studios, Paramount Studios, Warner
Bros., and New Line Cinema. It has a capacity of 15GB for single-sided discs and
30Gb for double-sided. It doesn’t need a caddy or cartridge and the cover layer is
the same thickness as current DVD discs, 0.6mm. The numerical aperture of the
optical pick-up head is also the same as DVD, 0.65mm.

Because of its similarities to current DVD, high definition DVD is cheaper to
manufacture than Blu-ray, because it doesn’t need big changes in the production
line set-up. Both HD-DVD and Blu-ray have backward compatibility with existing
DVDV discs. That is that current DVDs will play in HD-DVD player, although new
high definition DVD won’t play in older DVD players.

High definition DVD currently supports a number of compression formats, including
MPEG-2, VC1 (based on Microsoft’s Windows Media 9), and H.264 which is based on
MPEG-4 and will be supported by the next version of Apple’s QuickTime software,
which will be included with Mac OS X Tiger.