Week 7: EOTO Com Tech Timeline

DVDs and Blu-Ray

   

    DVDs and Blu-Rays are quite similar in their usage but have revolutionized home viewing for the common people. DVDs were made like CDs but were made with a shorter wavelength for television shows and movies. Blu-Ray disks are the upgraded version of the DVD but made with an even shorter wavelength to hold more space for longer movies or shows. As seen in the figure on the left, this shows a better description of how wavelengths work on various kinds of disks (Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD). Blu-Ray disks were also able to be played on different forms of media, instead of just using a DVD player you could use Blu-Rays on an Xbox or a PlayStation. 

    

    The history of disk technology starts off all the way back in the late 1940s with 8-Track tapes. 8-Tracks were a magnetic tape recording that were like the older brother to cassette tapes. Then came along Phonograph Records or as we refer to them today, Vinyls. These records allowed music to be played all throughout the home with phonographs. Then the music industry moved on to cassettes, a lighter and portable way to listen to music. Cassettes became the mainstream way of listening to music in the 80s from portability access and its lightweight design. This also spun off into a video format of cassettes called VHS or video home system. VHS allowed for movies and TV shows to be viewed right at home on your very own television! After that, the compacts disks were made and brought another kind of portable music listening into the industry. This also led to the movie industry to switch from cassette to disk, and then the DVD was created. The only upgrades the DVD evolved into were HD DVDs and Blu-Ray disks. 

Photo came from: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/

    DVDs have made the packaging of disks easier to store in the sense that DVDs take up a lot less space than VHS tapes, and also were easier to maintain. Like in Libraries, DVDs didn't have to be re-wound in order for someone else to rent it out. DVDs could also have the empty box displayed on the shelves and when brought to the counter, to then have the librarian search for the movie in a large drawer, so that the user can rent out the movie. DVDs also didn't wear out, as long as there were no scratches on this disk, the library almost never had to worry about re-buying the same movies and shows over and over again. 

Sources:

Crawford, Walt. “Up to Speed on DVD.” American Libraries, vol. 30, no. 8, 1999, pp. 71–74. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25637294

Fischetti, Mark. “Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD.” Scientific American, vol. 297, no. 2, 2007, pp. 98–99. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26069421