Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - CDs, DVDs, and Blu Ray

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

In 1982, the Phillips and Sony Corporations jointly released the compact audio disc to the world.  The technology involved was originally just used to play digital audio, but it actually had much more potential.  Over the last 40 years, basic optical disc technology used in CDs has expanded to store digital video and every type of digital data.  Yet, despite the ubiquity of the internet and the ability to access digital files all over the world, there is still a demand for this technology. Learn more about optical discs, CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors MasterClass Get up to 50% off at MASTERCLASS.COM/EVERYWHERE. Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! ButcherBox New users that sign up for ButcherBox will receive 2lbs of grass fed ground beef in every box for the lifetime of their subscription + $20 off your first box when you use code daily at checkout! Subscribe to the podcast!  https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Ben Long & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1982, the Phillips and Sony corporations jointly released the compact audio disc to the world. The technology involved was originally just used to play digital audio, but it actually had much more potential. Over the last 40 years, basic optical disk technology used in CDs has expanded to store digital video and every type of digital data. Yet, despite the ubiquity of the Internet and the ability to access digital files from anywhere in the world, there's still a demand for this technology. Learn more about optical discs, CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. I have to confess, despite the access we have to streaming movies and music, I have a soft spot for physical media. I personally have an extensive film collection that I started over 20 years ago. I've upgraded and expanded it over the years, and it now includes a little under 1,000 films. In a previous episode, I covered the history of digital audio and how it works. In this episode, I want to focus on optical disc technology and how it's expanded beyond music and how it's still used today. The story actually begins with the invention of the laser, which I also covered in a previous episode.

After years of work through the 1950s, the first working laser was developed in 1960 at Hughes Laboratories in a research group led by Theodore Myman. Laser, which is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, was a revolutionary invention. Lasers allow for an extremely focused, narrow beam of light where all the photons are allowed. aligned. At the time, researchers weren't even aware of what they could do with this revolutionary new tool. One person who thought about its practical application was James Russell. In 1965, he conceptualized and then patented an idea for a digital optical storage system that encoded information in microscopic pits on a disc and used a laser beam to read the data without physical contact. He received two patents for his ideas in 1966 and 1926.

1969 and had a prototype working by 1973. He pitched his idea to over 100 companies, and it was reported in scientific magazines as early as 1972. Two of the companies he presented to were Sony and Phillips. In 1978, Phillips, along with MCA and Pioneer, commercially released the Laserdisc. The Laserdisc was an optical storage format, but it wasn't digital. The Laserdisc was much larger than a CD. at a full 30 centimeters or 12 inches in diameter.

It looked like a CD, but it was the size of a vinyl album. The pits and lands on a laser disk surface encoded analog video and audio. Video is stored as an FM or frequently modulated analog signal, similar to the way video signals are transmitted in television broadcasting. A red laser beam shines on the surface of a laser disk as it spins. The laser reflects off the pits and lands, converting the reflected light into an electronic analog signal. The signal is processed and sent to a television for video playback and speakers for audio playback. Laser disk offered superior video and audio quality compared to VHS

tapes because it didn't degrade with repeated use. It also supported additional features such as chapter selection, freeze frames and slow motion playback. Despite being a superior technology to VHS tape, the cost of players and discs ensured that it remained a niche market. Today, there's still a a very small, enthusiastic group of laser disk users. However, the Holy Grail was to create a digital optical storage system, not an analog one. After Laserdisc struggled, Phillips began working on digital storage. In 1979, they partnered with Sony who had been working on their own system. Phillips brought to the table their knowledge of optical storage, which they developed via

the creation of Laserdisc, and Sony contributed its know-how in digital audio processing. The partnership led to the creation of the Red Book standard in 1980, which defined the technical specifications for compact digital audio disks. The format specified that the disc be 120 millimeters in diameter and have a capacity of 74 minutes of audio. According to legend, this was based on the wife of the Sony CEO who wanted to have a complete recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on a single disc. The audio was to have a sampling rate of five,

44.1 kilohertz with a bit depth of 16-bit audio. A low-power laser beam was used to read the data encoded as microscopic pits and lands on the disc. Advanced coding methods ensure data integrity even if the disc was slightly scratched or dirty. A standard CD has four layers. A polycarbonate layer, which is the base of the CD, is made of clear plastic. This layer provides structural support and contains the microscopic grooves. A reflective layer, which is a thin aluminum or gold layer, lies above the polycarbonate. It reflects the laser beam used to read the discs.

Next is the protective layer, which is a lacquer coating that protects the reflective layer from scratches and damage. And finally, the label layer, the topmost layer where information about the CD is printed. The first commercial CD was released on October 1, 1982 in Japan. and the first album released on audio CD was 52nd Street by Billy Joel. Phillips released the first CD player, the CDP 101 in 1982, which was initially expensive and only aimed at audio files.

CD eventually took over vinyl sales by 1988 and became the dominant form of music. However, audio was just the beginning. If audio could be digitally encoded, then anything digital could. In 1983, Phillips and Sony released the Yellow Book standard, which set forth the standards for compact disc read-only memory, or CD-ROM. CD-ROMs were quite popular for a while, as they stored much more data than floppy disks. CD-ROMs became the standard for software distribution in the 1990s.

However, there was even more that could be done. In 1990, the Orange Book was released, which set the standards for both CDR and CDRW. CDR was also known as CD write once. You could write something to a disc and it was there permanently. CDRW was also called CD read write. It was a disc that could repeatedly be written and read just like a regular floppy disc. Instead of a permanent metallic reflective layer, a CDR had a dye layer. The laser in the CD writer would heat the dye layer, creating permanent marks that mimic the pits of a normal CD.

CD rewrite discs contain a special phase-change material in the place of a dial-layer. When exposed to different laser intensities, the material can switch between crystalline and reflective, as well as amorphous and non-reflective states. A standard read-write CD could be written about 1,000 times. In order to grow the market, it was necessary to increase the capacity of disks. I remember versions of Microsoft Word in the 1990s that came on multiple CDs. because it was just so large. Moreover, the video business was a huge potential market

that could be replaced just like CDs replaced vinyl. And this led to the development of the digital versatile disc, or DVD. And yes, the V and DVD actually stands for versatile, not video. DVDs were developed as a collaboration among major technology companies, including Tshiba, Sony, Panasonic, and Phillips. The goal was to create a format for high-capacity, storage suitable for video and data. The DVD was officially introduced in 1995 and released to the market in 1996.

Movies had been released on CD in a format known as CD video, but the discs weren't big enough to contain an entire full-length movie. DVDs could store significantly more data than CDs. They could hold 4.7 gigabytes on a single-layered disc versus just 700 megabytes for a CD. Furthermore, a DVD could have different layers and be double-sided, increasing the total capacity to 17 gigabytes. This was done by creating smaller pits on the surface and reading them with a shorter wavelength laser. DVD uses a red laser with a shorter 650 nanometer wavelength instead of a CD laser, which is infrared with a 780 nanometer wavelength. DVDs introduce features like menus, chapters, and both.

bonus content, which became a hallmark of home entertainment. The first movies ever released on DVD in Japan on December 20th, 1996 were The Assassin, Blade Runner, Eraser, and the Fugitive. It took a few years, but DVDs finally started to hit their stride in the early 2000s when the cost of DVD players finally came down. However, soon after DVDs started to become popular, the shift to high-definition video began. High-definition videos took up considerably more data. A frame of standard definition video is 720 by 480 pixels, or 345,600 total pixels. A frame of high-definition 1080-video video is 1920 by 1080 pixels, or 2,073,600 pixels.

To put it more succinctly, a frame of high-definition video has six times. more data. You need smaller pits and a laser with an even shorter wavelength to store that much data. From 2000 to 2006, Blu-ray discs were developed by the Blue Ray Disc Association, which included Sony, Panasonic Phillips, and others. The name refers to the blue-violet laser used to read and write data, which has a shorter wavelength than the red laser used in DVDs, allowing for higher precision and capacity. A Blu-ray laser, laser has a wavelength of 405 nanometers. Single-layer Blu-ray disc can store 25 gigabytes, and dual-layer disks can store 50 gigabytes.

The first Blu-ray discs were released to the market in 2006. The Blu-ray format was launched in competition with a competing format known as HD-DVD, a format developed by Tashiba. However, by 2008, Blu-ray had won the format war, becoming the standard for high-definition video. High-definition video was pretty good, but even that was improved with the deployment of 4K ultra-high-definition video. 4K videos have a resolution of 3,840 by 2,160 pixels, giving it a picture with four times more resolution than a high-definition video. A 4K UHD disc uses the same type of Blu-ray laser. The difference primarily has to do with the video encoding. The Blu-ray Disc Association released the standards for 4K Blu-ray in 2015 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

A 4K Blu-ray disc can hold up to 100 gigabytes of data, and the video formats support high-dynamic range video and advanced audio such as Dolby Atmos. 4K Blu-ray hasn't had the widespread adoption of other optical disc formats, and there are a few reasons for this. First, you have to have both a 4K Blu-ray player and a 4K television set to play a disc. Second is that while the jump from standard definition DVD to Blu-ray was dramatic, the difference between Blu-ray and 4K is much smaller to the naked eye.

Finally, streaming services have mostly eliminated the demand for physical media. Despite that, there is still a small and loyal group of enthusiasts, such as myself, who still buy Blu-ray and 4K movies. There are many good reasons for this. For starters, most movies, in fact, the vast majority of them, are not available on streaming services. And the ones that are available are often only available for a limited amount of time before they're removed. The other reason is quality. Even if a video on, say, Netflix says it's in 4K, the bit rate is much lower and the compression on the video is much higher.

A 4K streaming video doesn't look bad, but there is a marked obvious difference between it and watching it on a 4K Blu-ray disc. I'll end this episode with something that many of you might have noticed if you've gone into an electronics store recently. They're now selling 8K televisions, which have an even higher resolution picture than 4K. Does that mean that we're going to have 8K Blu-ray discs on the market soon? The answer to that is almost certainly no. For almost any television that could fit into a regular residential home, there will be no

discernible difference in video quality between 4 and 8K. Our eyes simply can't distinguish the difference at that resolution. That's why there is zero demand for 8K discs at the moment, and there probably never will be. Given the drop in demand for physical media due to streaming, manufacturers especially don't see the point in investing in a brand new format that very few people can even watch. Physical media for both music and video is not what it used to be. The internet has largely supplanted physical media for most people. But that being said, physical media still does have its place

in the 21st century. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day.

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