Word: dvds
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
With the convergence of the TV and the PC finally becoming a reality, the technical specifications of tomorrow's DVDs have the potential to affect the development of not just movies but also console video games like the Xbox and PlayStation, the operating systems of Macintosh and Windows computers and a host of other interactive technologies. And Sony's recent successful bid for MGM Studios (and its rich backlist of classic films) underscored just how crucial DVDs are in the entertainment and electronics businesses. The current scuffle might not be settled before two competing (and incompatible) standards reach stores, potentially...
...beneath the waves, it won't be much of a loss to global tourism. The village is so remote that no road connects it to the outside world. The occasional barge unloads fuel after the ice breaks up, and when the weather is good, battered bush planes ferry in DVDs and cartons of Cheetos from the Sam's Club in Fairbanks. Visually, this village is nothing like the romantic images of Eskimos in igloos from old National Geographic magazines. Weathered clapboard houses, surrounded by rusty engine parts, sit helter-skelter along muddy paths. Indoor plumbing is rare, and drinking water...
...there is anything wrong with current video discs. But electronics engineers are busily inventing new families of smarter, more computer-like media devices that will not just play movies but will also make it easier to record television shows and store music, digital-photo albums and home videos?and DVDs as we know them just aren't up to the task. Instead, high-volume discs that are the same size as DVDs yet can hold over five times more information are being developed...
...this much: the hardware used in current DVD players, which emit red-laser beams to read data, should be replaced with gear that uses blue lasers. That's because a blue laser's narrower, more efficient beam enables far more information to be packed onto discs. Blue-laser DVDs promise sharper picture quality suitable for display on advanced flat-screen high-definition TVs and computer monitors. Previously, they were too expensive and unreliable to go in mass-market electronics, but a recent breakthrough in the materials that make up blue-laser diodes (the light-emitting component) has made them commercially...
...executives, led by an equally legendary veteran, senior vice president Hisashi Yamada, cheerfully admit that they spurned the Blu-ray consortium's advances and decided to develop their own HD-DVD technology instead. The proud victor over Sony in setting the standards of the first generation of DVDs in the 1990s, Toshiba is unwilling to meekly follow the competition. Yamada seems to delight in playing spoiler in the face of what many at Toshiba perceive as Sony's arrogance. "The way of Sony is very simple," says Yamada. "'Our format is best,' they say. 'You should adopt it,' they...