DVD Player

In November 1996, Toshiba launched its SD-3000 DVD player, the first of its kind in Japan. Matsushita, Sony, and other competitors released their first DVD players around t he same time. There's little merit in debating who was actually first, since the difference was a month or two at most.

The DVD development project began in 1994. The most common image medium in those days was the VHS video cassette. While the laser disks also available at that time offered superior image quality (and had a landmark impact on karaoke), they were large - up to 30 cm in diameter - and a single disk barely stored one movie, even when using both sides. Laser disks won limited consumer acceptance. Worst of all, the disks offered only analog image data. The DVD proposed by Toshiba (called "SD") stored both audio and video data in pure digital format. An entire movie fit onto a 12 cm disk, the same size as an audio CD, while offering high image and audio quality and a flexible array of functions.

Placing extended recordings on a 12 cm disk requires both a high density disk and MPEG2 technology for compressing video data. Fortunately, Toshiba had already developed an MPEG2 encoder. And thanks to its close ties with Time Warner in Hollywood, Toshiba had access to numerous movie titles. Working closely with Time Warner, the project team began MPEG2 compression tests using these titles, seeking to minimize data volumes while achieving a level of image quality that would satisfy even Hollywood professionals.

Hollywood had another requirement:: One disk containing a full title was to cost less than 20 dollars (the price of two movie tickets, popcorn, and soda). A single disk was to store data sufficient for 135 minutes on one side; a capacity that would be sufficient for 90% of the movies produced in Hollywood. In response, Toshiba devised a method whereby two 0.6 mm disks were assembled back to back to form a disk 1.2 mm thick. This configuration was easy to manufacture, and allowed for the possibility of increased density further down the line.