DVDs

DVDs have changed the way we view our favourite films and television shows, incorporating a format that is easy to use, easy to produce and is easily accessible due to their relative inexpensiveness in comparison to other forms. Nowadays they are cheap to make, and their popularity does not seem to have diminished with time, suggesting that they may well not be superseded for a long time to come.

There have been several recent technological innovations that, while they may be either as popular as the DVD or more innovative, have not been as well received as they might have been and may not replace DVDs for a long time. One of these recent formats, called the HD DVD, has already unsuccessfully competed with normal DVDs and Blu-Ray, mainly due to the fact that the HD DVD was not promoted in the media as much as the Blu-Ray. Another factor was that the HD DVD could not hold as much data as its competitor, with dual layer discs being able to store 30GB and 50GB respectively.

There is one form of technology that may one day supersede the DVD in around ten year’s time, which is currently being developed at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. The 5D DVD uses a multilayer system to encode and read data on multiple layers, with disc space going up to ten terabytes of storage, acting much like a normal DVD but with incredible amounts of storage space.