Video CD - Brief History

Brief History

In the early 1970s, Philips and MCA developed the Laserdisc. That optical medium is 30 cm in diameter, and holds an hour of analog video (along with audio in either analog or digital) on both sides. Though they provide superior picture quality, and do not degrade nearly so much over time, Laserdiscs were always overshadowed by VHS because of their high price and lack of recording abilities.

Near the end of the 1970s, Philips created a small-scale version of the Laserdisc. The disc is 120 mm in diameter, and is single-sided. Dubbed the compact disc or CD, the format was initially designed to store digitized sound and proved to be a success in the music industry.

A few years later, Philips decided to give CDs the ability to produce video just like its 12-inch counterpart. This led to the creation of CD Video (CD-V) in 1987. However, the disc's small size significantly impeded the ability to store analog video; thus only 5 minutes of picture information could fit on the disc's surface (despite the fact that the audio was digital). Therefore CD-V distribution was limited to featuring music videos.

By the early 1990s engineers were able to digitize video signals, greatly improving storage efficiency. Because this new format could hold 83 minutes of audio and video, releasing movies on compact discs finally became a reality. Extra capacity was obtained by sacrificing the error correction (it was believed that minor errors in the datastream would go unnoticed by the viewer). This format was named Video CD or VCD.

VCD enjoyed a brief period of success, with a few major feature films being released in the format (usually as a 2 disc set). However, the introduction of the CD-R disc and associated recorders stopped the release of feature films in their tracks because the VCD format had no means of preventing unauthorized (and perfect) copies from being made. However, VCDs are still being released in Asia, but they recently had means of copy-protection.

The development of more sophisticated, higher capacity optical disc formats yielded the DVD format, released only a few years later with a copy protection mechanism. DVD players use lasers that are of shorter wavelength than those used on CDs, allowing the recorded pits to be smaller, so that more information can be stored. The DVD was so successful that it eventually pushed VHS out of the video market once suitable recorders became widely available. Nevertheless, VCDs made considerable inroads into developing nations, where they are still in use today.