Comparison of high definition optical disc formats Comparison of high definition optical disc formats This article compares the technical specifications of multiple high definition formats, including HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc; two mutually incompatible, high definition optical disc formats that, beginning in 2006, attempted to improve upon and eventually replace the DVD standard. The two formats remained in a format war until February 19, 2008 when Toshiba, HD DVD's creator, announced plans to cease development, manufacturing and marketing of HD DVD players and recorders. Other high-definition optical disc formats were attempted, including the multi-layered red-laser Versatile Multilayer Disc and a Chinese made format called EVD. Both appear
Optical disc recording modes the data, and closed by a lead-out area. The data is addressable in sectors of 2048 bytes each, with the first sector address being zero. There are no run-out blocks as in DVD-R disc-at-once. Session-At-Once (SAO) recording allows multiple sessions to be recorded and finalized on a single disc. The resulting disc can be read by computer drives, but sessions after the first are generally not readable by CD Audio equipment. Audio Master Quality Recording was introduced by Yamaha in 2002. This recording mode significantly reduces jitter levels causing noise and clicks (-30% according to Yamaha) and improves audio and