We all know, just a few days ago, Toshiba announced they will give up developing, manufacturing and marketing HD-DVD products.
After all, the "next-generation format war" ends up.
And we also know, Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD are two new optical storage technologies that were the two sides fighting for the war, that who's going to be the successor of DVD.
Is it really true that DVD has its days tapered off? DVD is great.
It can store movies, music, and even backup data with a DVD burner like Nero.
Of course, all the stored can be also conversely ripped out with DVD ripper software like ImTOO DVD Ripper Ultimate.
But, with the introduction of high-definition TV (HDTV) to the world, DVD storage capacity showed to be insufficient to this application.
DVD supports a resolution up to 720-480 pixels, while HDTV works with resolutions as high as 1920-1080 pixels.
Just to give you an idea, two hours of high-definition video with data compression requires 22 GB of storage space.
Keep in mind that the maximum capacity of a DVD is of 17 GB, if a DVD-18 disc is used (a dual-sided dual-layer disc).
So how to provide a higher data storage capacity for high-definition contents? Here are the two DVD successor candidates: Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD.
In fact, one of them is just a DVD disc with a higher storage capacity to store high-definition contents.
The main motivation to the creation of a DVD successor was the introduction of HDTV, which requires a higher disc storage capacity, feature a regular DVD cannot provide.
But how a Blu-ray Disc or a HD-DVD is able to store more data than a regular DVD disc? Both of these two discs have the same physical size of DVD discs (and CDs), with a diameter of 12 cm (120 mm, around 4 ¾").
As we can see in Video Converter Reviews, technologically speaking these two technologies are very similar, the main difference between the two being the storage capacity.
A single-layer Blu-ray disc can hold up to 25 GB, while a single-layer HD-DVD disc can hold up to "only" 15 GB.
A dual-layer Blu-ray disc can store up to 54 GB, while a dual-layer HD-DVD can store only up to 30 GB.
As we saw, on the storage size Blu-ray has a better advantage over HD-DVD, even though Blu-ray discs are more expensive.
A single-layer Blu-ray Disc can hold up to 25 GB while the same disc using HD-DVD technology can store only 15 GB.
A dual-layer Blu-ray Disc can store up to 54 GB, while the same disc using HD-DVD technology can store only up to 30 GB.
In terms of compatibility, both Blu-ray and HD-DVD players are capable of playing CDs and DVDs, but it won't be possible to read a Blu-ray disc on a HD-DVD player and vice-versa (it is technically possible to create a player that can read both formats, but it will probably cost almost twice, as it will need two separated circuits inside the unit, one for each technology, and someone are trying to...
).
For now, DVD discs continue to be a good choice for the average Joe.
If you are not a technology freak, why not just keep going with your Nero and ImTOO?