HD DVD

Also known as High Definition DVD, High Definition Digital Versatile Disc

discontinued optical disc format

Key facts

Media type: High-density optical disc
Encoding: VC-1 , H.264 , and MPEG-2
Capacity: 15 GB (single layer), 30 GB (dual layer)
Read mechanism: 405 nm laser: , 1× @ 36 Mbit/s & 2× @ 72 Mbit/s
Write mechanism: 405 nm laser: , 1× @ 36 Mbit/s & 2× @ 72 Mbit/s
Developed by: Toshiba DVD Forum
Usage: Data storage, 1080p high-definition video
Extended from: DVD , DVD-Video
Released: March 31, 2006 ( 2006-03-31 )
Discontinued: March 28, 2008 ( 2008-03-28 ) , (1 year, 11 months and 28 days)

via Wikipedia infobox

~26 min read

Encyclopedic overview

HD DVD (short for High Density Digital Versatile Disc) is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video. Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format, but lost out to Blu-ray, which was supported by Sony and others.

HD DVD employed a blue laser with a shorter wavelength (with the exception of the 3× DVD and HD REC variants), and it stored about 3.2 times as much data per layer as its predecessor (maximum capacity: 15 GB per layer compared to 4.7 GB per layer on a DVD). The format was commercially released in 2006 and fought a protracted format war with its rival, the Blu-ray Disc. Compared to the Blu-ray Disc, the HD DVD was released earlier by a quarter year, featured a lower capacity per layer (compared to 25 GB of Blu-ray), but saved manufacturing costs by allowing existing DVD manufacturing equipment to be repurposed with minimal modifications, and movie playback was not restricted through region codes.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “HD DVD” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.