The first DVD-Video specification of the DVD Forum came out end of 1995. The trading of DVD videos came only in 1997, however, because the film industry was on an extended specification that supports their traditional marketing strategies. For this, the Wholesale DVDs were given two technical distribution controls, the region code and copy protection.
The first DVD players – which of course could also play audio CDs – came on the market at the end of 1997. With the increasingly rapid decline in prices of DVD players and also the related films at the same time technical improvements, the distribution of the Wholesale DVDs format grew.
Successor technology
While in the years 2000 to about 2008, many different successor technologies were introduced – Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD), Finalized Versatile Disc (FVD), Versatile Multilayer Disc (VMD), HD-DVD and the Blu-ray Disc.
DVD video from a user perspective
From the user’s point of view, especially the much better picture and sound quality is cited as a decisive argument for Wholesale DVDs than their predecessors. In addition, the playing mechanism experiences less wear because it operates without mechanical contact.
Also, the image quality is not directly by the digital data from the storage of the state of the medium. Furthermore, the coil is omitted, a DVD is a random access is possible. This also non-sequential features like direct access to chapters are possible.
In addition, some Wholesale DVDs have additional features such as additional audio tracks for further synchronization versions or for comments on specific scenes. Closed captions are also possible. Often bonus materials are included, such as a production documentation of the film, interviews and commentary with production involved as directors, actors or other extras such as movie trailers, music videos, or even computer games.
Dual-Layer DVD
Since 2004, recordable DVDs are offered with two instead of only one data layer. They are called “DL”, which is in negative format for “dual layer” (DVD-R DL), in contrast to the plus format for “Double Layer” (DVD + R DL).
The DVD ± R DL offers 8.5GB capacity per disc, that is about 1.8 times that of a single-layer DVD. Their additional capacity is often sufficient to burn large individual files (about high-definition video) on a single disk, rather than distributed among two conventional DVDs and without having to compress the data again. Too low reflective properties prevent the reliable use of the second data layer.
In addition, there are also double-sided media in the DVD-R, DVD + R and DVD-RAM formats. These actually take 2 x 4.7 GB, 9.4 GB per disc so because they basically consist of two individual DVDs.