CD versus DVD: The Ultimate Portable Storage Battle

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph. Over the years, changes in technology have contributed to shaping the way in which we live our lives. From the invention of the light bulb to that of the television set and computer, nothing remains the same once a technological advance has come about. Currently, another technological advance is preparing to change the way we live our lives. This new device is known as the DVD player and it is attempting to replace the CD player in the electronic multimedia world. This article is available in The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research: http://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/ur/vol2/iss1/11 CD versus DVD: The Ultimate Portable Storage Battle By: Brian Schmidt Over the years, changes in technology have contributed to shaping the way in which we live our lives. From the invention of the light bulb to that of the television set and computer, nothing remains the same once a technological advance has come about. Currently, another technological advance is preparing to change the way we live our lives. This new device is known as the DVD player and it is attempting to replace the CD player in the electronic multimedia world. Some people can remember back to when they used to listen to music on the radio and watch movies on the projector. Then came some enhancements that moved music onto vinyl records that were played with a needle. Movies eventually made their way onto VHS tapes and, at about the same time, music found its way to cassette tapes. Laser Discs came out bearing the weight of movies and offering somewhat better quality, but never got a strong hold in the movie industry. Around this time everything seemed fairly calm in the media industry until that one fateful day when the CD was introduced. It was only about 13 years ago when the CD-ROM was introduced into the PC world. CD's rapidly took over the software industry, as it was more practical to release a software package, or multiple packages, on one CD. This eliminated the need to monitor an installation (waiting to insert another floppy) . Also, CD's had a storage capacity equal to many hard drives of the time. Eventually, the CD-Rand CD-RW emerged, making it possible for a user to create their own CD's. This technology grew very quickly, as it gave users the chance to create their own CD's to hold music or software. The CD-R gave users the chance to write their own CD's while the CD-RW allowed them to write and re-write CD's. This ability to reuse the same CD a couple of times was an excellent enhancement and made the write-able CD drives a little more economical. More recently, the DVD has entered the picture. The DVD, otherwise known as the Digital Versatile Disk or Digital Video Disk, is preparing to change the way we think about movies, music, and software. 1 The development of DVD technology started out in the hands of two separate groups. The Multimedia CD (MMCD), designed by Philips and Sony, and the Super Density (SD) disc, created by seven companies led by Toshiba, were the two possible technologies on the drawing board in December of 1995 when the two groups united to form the standard now known as DVD. From this point, DVD ran into many pitfalls, just as all new technologies do. on its way to becoming a viable contender against the CD. The next question is just how viable this new contender is. The DVD industry had many problems which needed to be resolved before it could begin releasing and marketing this new technology. One of the main issues was with the motion picture industry. This problem delayed the shipping of DVD products from the summer of 1996 to the spring of 1997. The problem stemmed from political and technical disagreements over the amount of protection DVD technology offered against the illegal copying and distributing of the movies which it would hold. It wasn't until October 29, 1996 that an agreement was made about the copy protection issues and work was finally able to resume on the development of the technology. This delay cost the DVD industry to lose a lot of potential profits since it was not able to release its new product in time for the Christmas buying season. Marketing has increased greatly for the DVD since the delay, which pushed its release into 1997. As soon as the first DVD players began to appear in March 1997 for use with television, people began buying them as quickly as they could. This was due to the