What is

What is Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD?


Blu-ray Disc (abbreviation BD) is a next-generation optical disc format meant for storage of high-definition video and high-density data. The Blu-ray standard was jointly developed by a group of consumer electronics and PC companies called the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). As compared to the HD DVD format, its main competitor, Blu-ray has more information capacity per layer, 25 instead of 15 gigabytes, but may initially be more expensive to produce. Wikipedia

HD DVD (High Density Digital Versatile Disc or High Definition Digital Video Disc)
is a discontinued digital optical media format which is being developed as one standard for high-definition DVD. HD DVD is similar to the competing Blu-ray Disc, which also uses the same CD-size (120 mm diameter) optical data storage media and 405 nm wavelength blue laser. HD DVD is promoted by Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, and, most recently, Microsoft, HP [1], and Intel. HD DVD was discontinued in February 2008. Wikipedia

What is DVD?

DVD stands for Digital Versatile/Video Disc, DVDR stands for DVD Recordable and DVDRW for DVD ReWriteable. If you're familiar with regular audio/music CDs or regular DVD-Video discs, then you will know what a recordable DVD looks like. A recordable DVD stores up to 2 hours of very good quality DVD-Video, including several audio tracks in formats like stereo, Dolby Digital or DTS and also advanced menu systems, subtitles and still pictures that can be played by many standalone DVD Players and most computer DVD-ROMs. If you choose to lower the video quality it is possible to store several hours video on a recordable DVD using low bitrates and low resolution with video quality more like VHS, SVHS, SVCD, CVD or VCD. It is also possible to have up to 4.37* GB ordinary data or mix DVD-Video and data on a recordable DVD that can be played by most computer DVD-ROMs.

There are three competing DVD Recording standards, DVD-R/DVD-RW and DVD+R/DVD+RW have pretty similiar features and are compatible with many standalone DVD Players and most DVD-ROMs while DVD-RAM has less DVD Player and DVD-ROM compatibility but better recording features.

What is VCD?

VCD stands for 'Video Compact Disc' and basically it is a CD that contains moving pictures and sound. If you're familiar with regular audio/music CDs, then you will know what a VCD looks like. A VCD has the capacity to hold up to 74/80 minutes on 650MB/700MB CDs respectively of full-motion video along with quality stereo sound. VCDs use a compression standard called MPEG to store the video and audio. A VCD can be played on almost all standalone DVD Players and of course on all computers with a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive with the help of a software based decoder / player. It is also possible to use menus and chapters, similiar to DVDs, on a VCD and also simple photo album/slide shows with background audio. The quality of a very good VCD is about the same as a VHS tape based movie but VCD is usually a bit more blurry. If you want better quality checkout SVCD,CVD or DVD.

A VCD can be played on

- Standalone VCD Players(very common in ASiA).
- Almost all standalone DVD Players.
- Playstations with VCD-addon (Playstation 2 does NOT support VCDs)
- Sega Saturn with VCD-addon
- Dreamcast with VCD-addon
- And of course on all computers with a CD-ROMs/DVD-ROMs with a software VCD/MPG Player.

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