Blu-ray and HD DVD

HD-DVD

Toshiba who chaired The DVD Forum was originally split over the expense whether to develop the blue laser technology or not.

The forum voted to approve a proposal endorsed by many motion picture studios that involved compressing HD content onto dual-layer DVD-9 discs.

However, the forum's Steering Committee announced in 2002 that it was looking into its own blue-laser high-definition solution. In August of that year, Toshiba and NEC announced that they were working on a competing standard Advanced Optical Disc (HD DVD).

It wasn't until shortly after, that The DVD Forum actually proposed the name of HD DVD the next year.

The Competition for HD Media

HD DVD did have a head start in the high definition video market and Blu-ray Disc sales were slow at first.

The Sony Blu-ray player was expensive and only available in Japan. Together with this, there were few titles available.

However, when the PlayStation 3 launched, it had a built in Blu-ray Disc player. In 2007 Warner came up with Total Hi Def, which was a mix if Blu-ray on one side and HD DVD on the other but it was never released.

By 2007, Blu-ray discs were outselling HD DVDs by two to one. In February 2008, Toshiba announced it was pulling out of the competition and withdrew the HD DVD format, leaving Blu Ray as the winner in the battle for a true HD medium.

The PlayStation 3 by Sony obviously gave a massive boost to the success of the Blu-ray format, Sony also had a better marketing campaign. By mid 2008 several Hollywood studios said that Blu-ray Disc's adoption of the BD+ anti-copying system was the reason they supported Blu-ray Disc over HD DVD.

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