A Shiny History of CDs and DVDs

CDs began with the American inventor James T. Russell, who was credited with inventing the first system to record digital media on a photosensitive plate (the leading idea for CDs). He got the idea from the optophone, first presented in 1931, which used light to record and playback sound signals on a transparent photograph. 

Russell's patent application was filed in 1966, and he was then granted the patent in 1970 to begin work.

A particular group of engineers banded together with the intent to create a new digital audio disc was set up by Sony and Phillips in 1979. It was led by Kees Schouhamer Immink and Toshitada Doi, who created laser and optical disc technology. Thus, the Sony CDP-101, the first commercially available audio CD player, was released in October 1982 in Japan.

With positive consumer feedback, the market for physical media began to open up.

Despite costing up to $1,000 at the time, various sellers sold over 400,000 CD players in the United States between 1983 and 1984, and by 1988, CD sales in the United States were greater than those of vinyl LPs. Soon after that, CD sales surpassed even the sales of pre-recorded music cassette tapes. Due to the mass demand for CDs, there were 50 pressing plants worldwide to manufacture over 400 million CDs.

At this point, a CD was an optical disc encoded with two channels of LPCM audio. Each channel was signed with 16-bit values sampled at 44100 Hz. A CD has a capacity of up to 74–80 minutes (up to 24 minutes for a mini 8 cm CD) and would be read by a semiconductor laser at 780 nm wavelength.

The compact disc is a result of its predecessor, the LaserDisc. The information is read on the disc from a reflective layer using a laser as a light source through a protective substrate, compared to Opophine and James Russell's original patent. 

The first artist to sell 1 million copies on CD was Dire Straits, with their 1985 album Brothers in Arms.

DVDs store any digital data, including video games, software, and other computer files. While being physically indistinguishable, DVDs can hold more media than CDs. 

The precursor of the DVD was released in 1987: the CD Video, which used analog video encoding on optical discs that matched the standard size of audio CDs. Later that year, two new optical disc storage formats were being developed, including the Multimedia Compact Disc (MMCD) backed by Philips and Sony and the Super Density Disc supported by Toshiba, Time Warner, Matsushita Electric, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC.

On May 3rd, 1995, five computer companies (IBM, Apple, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft) issued a press release saying they would only accept a single format and boycott both formats unless a group consensus was achieved on a single standard. This was the proposal of the SD9, which had dual-layered readability from one side, compared to SD10, where the user would have to flip the disc physically. 

On September 15th, 1995, Philips and Sony unified with companies backing the SD disc to release a single combination format. 

In November 1995, Samsung announced it would begin mass production in September 1996, which was issued to the public on November 1st, 1996, in Japan, mostly with music video releases. 

December 20th, 1996, marked the first major release from Warner Home Video, with four titles being released. 

The US release was delayed multiple times until setting on early 1997. 

Today's standard single-layer DVD can store up to 4.7 GB of data, while a dual-layer DVD can store up to 8.5 GB. Other variants can store up to a max of 17.08 GB.

Some DVDs were stamped, meaning data could not be rewritten or erased. Yet, there are blank DVDs that can be recorded once and others that are rewritable DVDs that can be recorded and erased many times with a DVD-ROM.

"Goodbye VHS, hello DVD," said many households worldwide. In 2001, more DVD players were sold than VCRs for the first time in the United States. This meant that 1 in 4 American households owned a DVD player. In 2007, that number grew to 4 out of 5 Americans who owned a DVD player. Not only did this surpass VCR players, but it was also greater than that of personal computers or cable television in an American home. 

In 2006, HD DVD and Blu-Ray Disc HD DVD competed unsuccessfully with Blu-ray Disc in the format war of 2006–2008. A dual-layer HD DVD can store up to 30 GB, and a dual-layer Blu-ray disc can hold up to 50 GB.

By 2009, 85% of stores were selling Blu-ray Discs; however, you also needed a high-definition television and appropriate connection cables to use Blu-ray discs.

By 2017, digital streaming services had overtaken the sales of DVDs and Blu-rays for the first time, which was the inevitable fall of physical media.