Ongoing History of New Music

Ongoing History Daily: The death of the HD-DVD CD

In the early 2000s, there was a push to replace the compact disc with something better, a format with greater frequency response. One attempt was called HD-DVD, which was an offshoot of DVD technology.

Regular CDs are played using a red laser but DVDs use a blue one. The shorter frequency of the laser allowed it to read more information on the disc. The thinking was if people are using this sort of tech for watching movies, why not use it for listening to music?

The problem was HD-DVD had a competitor in Blu-ray, which was based on the same principles. Even though HD-DVD was first to market, cheaper to produce, and was supported by both Intel and Windows, it lost out to Blu-ray, especially when that format started appearing in Sony PlayStations.

Those HD-DVD are now just relics, useless pieces of plastic.

Yesterday’s post had a story on a great where-are-they-now situation.

And don’t forget to check out my podcast The Ongoing History of New Music where you listen on SpotifyApple PodcastsGoogleStitcher, or wherever you get your on-demand audio.

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 37931 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

One thought on “Ongoing History Daily: The death of the HD-DVD CD

  • DVDs used red lasers (and CDs used infrared). HD-DVDs and BluRays used blue/violet lasers.

    Reply

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