Blu-ray discs are more expensive, but hold more data - there, that's all. So now that you know why Blu-ray discs cost more and why Sony/Philips and Toshiba are all harshing on one another so much, we can get to the really important stuff: the numbers, and who's supporting who.
The battle over who will rule the next DVD era is a main attraction at Ceatec Japan 2005, the information-technology and electronics show that opened Oct. 4 in Tokyo. Here, a Toshiba employee shows off one of the contending technologies: a player geared for the HD DVD format and a 30GB double-layer disk.
Microsoft and Intel last week tried to swing the computing, consumer electronics and entertainment industry toward HD DVD in a format war to establish a higher-capacity successor to today's DVD. It didn't work.
Intel and Microsoft are combining their industry power in an attempt to make the HD DVD format the victor in a battle over a standard to succeed DVD.
DVD stands for Digital Versatile/Video Disc, DVDR stands for DVD Recordable and DVDRW for DVD ReWriteable.
DVD (also known as "Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc") is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. DVDs resemble compact discs as their physical dimensions are the same (120 mm (4.72 inches) or occasionally 80 mm (3.15 inches) in diameter) but they are encoded in a different format and at a much higher density. The official DVD specification is maintained by the DVD Forum.
VideoCD, View CD, Compact Disc digital video) is a standard digital format for storing video on a Compact Disc. VCDs are playable in dedicated VCD players, nearly all personal computers, most modern DVD-Video players, and some video game consoles.
The laserdisc (LD) was the first commercial optical disc storage medium, and is used primarily for the presentation of movies.