Everything about hi-tech equipment


What are HD DVD players?

HD DVD, High Density DVD, or High-Definitiontheir house. The HD DVD format also can be
DVD is a high-density optical disc formatapplied to current red laser DVDs in 5, 9, 15
designed for the storage of data andand 18 GB capacities which offers a
high-definition  video.lower-cost option for distributors, this type
of disk is often called 3x DVD as it has
Historythree times the bandwidth of regular DVD
video.
The HD DVD disc is designed to be the
successor to the standard DVD format. It canLike the original DVD format, the data layer
store about three times as much data as itsof an HD DVD disc is 0.6 mm below the
predecessor. (15 GB per layer instead of 4.7surface. The numerical aperture of the
GB) The HD DVD standard was jointly developedoptical pick-up head is 0.65, compared with
by a group of consumer electronics and PC0.6 for DVD and 0.85 for Blu-ray aperture.
companies, spearheaded by Toshiba. OnBoth of the new formats are backward
November 19, 2003, the DVD Forum voted tocompatible with DVDs and both employ the same
support HD DVD as the HDTV successor of thevideo compression techniques: MPEG-2, Video
standard DVD. At this meeting, they alsoCodec  1  (VC-1)  and  H.264/MPEG-4  AVC.
renamed it HD DVD. The format had previously
been called the "Advanced Optical Disc"File  systems
(AOD).
Like previous optical disc formats, HD DVD
At CES 2006, Microsoft announced that theresupports several file systems, like ISO 9660
would be an external add-on HD DVD drive forand Universal Disk Format (UDF). Currently,
the Xbox 360 game console; this was releasedall HD DVD titles use UDF version 2.5 as the
in November 2006. Also at CES [1]2006,file system, the same one used for Blu-ray
companies backing HD DVD said that nearly 200releases.
titles would be available for the format by
the  end  of  the  year.Audio
On March 31, 2006, Toshiba released theirHD DVD can be mastered with up to 7.1 channel
first HD DVD player in Japan at Y110,000surround sound using linear (uncompressed)
($934).[2] HD DVD was released in UnitedPCM, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital EX, DTS and
States on April 18, 2006,[3] with playersDTS ES formats also used on DVDs. In
priced  at  $499  and  $799.addition, it also supports Dolby Digital Plus
and the lossless formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS
The current specification version for HDHD. Currently, most DVD movies are made with
DVD-ROM and HD DVD-Rewritable is version 1.0.5.1 channels of surround sound. There are
The specification for HD DVD-R is currentlyrelatively few titles that offer 6.1 channels
at 0.9. The first HD DVD-ROM drives wereof surround sound. On HD DVD the Dolby
expected to be unveiled by Q4 2006, with massformats are mandatory, meaning that a Dolby
production to start in Q1 2007. The actualDigital, Dolby Digital Plus or Dolby TrueHD
product launch of both CE and PC unitstrack may be used as the sole soundtrack on a
occurred in late 2006. As of December 2006,disc, because every player will have a
more than 120,000 HD DVD's had been sold indecoder that can process any of these
the  United  States.[citation  needed]bitstreams. For lossless audio in movies in
the PCM, Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD formats, HD
As of February 2007, HD DVD is in a formatDVD discs support encoding in up to 24-bit
war  with  Blu-ray  Disc.192 kHz for two channels, or up to eight
channels of up to 24-bit/96 kHz encoding. For
Technical  specificationsreference, even new big-budget Hollywood
films are mastered in only 24-bit/48 kHz,
Hardwarewith 16-bit/48 kHz being common for ordinary
films.
HD DVD has a single-layer capacity of 15 GB
and a dual-layer capacity of 30 GB. There isVideo
also a double-sided hybrid format which
contains standard DVD-Video format video onThe HD DVD format supports a wide variety of
one side, playable in regular DVD players,resolutions, from low-resolution CIF and
and HD DVD video on the other side forSDTV, all video resolutions supported by the
playback in high definition on HD DVDDVD-Video standard, and up to HDTV formats
players. These hybrid discs make retailsuch as 720p, 1080i and 1080p.[6] All movie
marketing and shelf space management easier.titles released so far have had the feature
This also removes some confusion from DVDencoded in 1080p, with supplements in 480i or
buyers since they can now buy a disc480p. Most titles are encoded with VC-1.
compatible with any DVD/HD DVD player in



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