History - LG BH100 Training Manual

OVERVIEW

HISTORY

Since the advent of recorded media in the Optical Disc Technologies
late 1800's, audio and video entertainment
has been an ever-growing part of society.
Several of the largest and most powerful
companies began in, or have ties in, the
media industry. Radio and Television
brought the industry into the home. The
early 1970's marked the beginning of
"Home Theaters" with the arrival of video
cassette tapes. VHS's entry to the
marketplace in 1976 began the rise of
Home Theaters to the mainstream, with
VHS Laserdisc CD CD-i VCD DVD
ultimately most every US household having
1976 1978 1981 1991 1993 1996
the ability to watch pre-recorded movies
"at will".
LaserDisc's arrival in 1978 marked the first consumer optical disc format. VHS made it possible to
consumers to view movies within their own homes, whenever they wanted. LaserDisc made it possible
to consumers to experience non-linear playback, meaning one could easily jump from point to point
in a movie without having to scan forward or backward. LaserDisc was also the first format to use a
laser to read pits and grooves on a disc to translate data. While LaserDisc was a major technological
advancement, it was never very popular.
Compact Discs hit the market in 1981 as an audio only format of LaserDisc. The now familiar 12cm
disc size was first used for CDs. The large success of the CD format more than made up for LaserDisc's
lackluster popularity, and let the industry know that optical media was a viable format.
The early 1990's saw some advancements to the Compact Disc format. CD-I (Compact Disc Interactive),
in 1991, explored the interactive aspects of digital media delivery. VideoCDs, introduced in 1993,
began the compression of video content to fit on a 12cm disc.
In 1996, twenty years after the emergence of VHS, the Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) format was
introduced. DVD quickly became the standard for Home Theater media. DVD expanded on the "at will"
aspect of VHS and the non-linear aspect of LaserDisc by adding improved picture quality, surround
sound, and multiple audio tracks (multiple languages). DVD has become the most popular form of
media, in many cases generating more revenue than theater ticket sales.
In the ten years since the introduction of DVD, and thirty years since the introduction of VHS, there
has grown a need for a new, more advanced media format. The rise of High Definition TVs and
programming drives a desire for a media format that accommodates high resolution. The existing DVD
format, holding 4.7GB per layer, is simply not robust enough for high definition content. The success
of optical media and DVD in particular lays a substantial base for a next generation format.
The most logical method to increase data capacity on a disc is to make the data smaller. Since data is
on an optical disc in the form of pits and grooves, reducing the size of the pits and grooves will allow
more data on the disc. The "trick" lies in the fact that if the data is smaller, the device to read the
data must also be reduced in size in order to read it. In the case of optical discs, the device to read
data is a laser beam. By definition, a laser beam is already focused into a optimal size and cannot be
physically changed. However, there is a way to change the "size" of lasers.
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BH100 Blu-ray Player Overview