Facts about DVDs

1. 08

   Developed jointly by Sony, Panasonic, Philips, and Toshiba, DVDs use a 650-nanometer red laser to read microscopic pits and lands pressed into a reflective disc surface.

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2. 07

   DVD authoring software in the early 2000s required creators to manually encode video at 29.97 frames per second for NTSC regions and 25 frames per second for PAL regions due to different television standards.

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3. 06

   By 2008, DVD sales and rentals generated approximately 24 billion dollars in annual revenue globally, surpassing theatrical box office earnings for the first time.

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4. 05

   Movies on DVDs required regional coding systems dividing the world into six zones to control distribution rights and release dates across different countries.

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5. 04

   A standard DVD player's laser reads data at 1.2 megabytes per second, making playback speed approximately 9 times faster than a CD player's typical 150 kilobytes per second data transfer rate.

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6. 03

   Dual-layer DVDs, introduced in 2002, could store 8.5 gigabytes by using two recordable surfaces, doubling the capacity of single-layer discs.

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7. 02

   In 2002, DVD players outsold VCRs for the first time in North America, marking the beginning of the format's dominance in home video entertainment.

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8. 01

   The DVD format was officially released on March 24, 1997, storing up to 4.7 gigabytes on a single-layer disc, roughly 7 times more capacity than a CD.

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