Competition from HD DVD
The DVD Forum (which was chaired by Toshiba) was deeply split over whether to go with the more expensive blue lasers or not. Although today’s Blu-ray Discs appear virtually identical to a standard DVD, when the Blu-ray Discs were initially developed they required a protective caddy to avoid mis-handling by the consumer (early CD-Rs also featured a protective caddy for the same purpose). The Blu-ray prototype’s caddy was both expensive and physically different from DVD, posing several problems.In March 2002, the forum voted to approve a proposal endorsed by Warner Bros. and other motion picture studios that involved compressing HD content onto dual-layer DVD-9 discs. However, in spite of this decision, the DVD Forum’s Steering Committee announced in April that it was pursuing its own blue-laser high-definition solution.In August, Toshiba and NEC announced their competing standard Advanced Optical Disc.It was finally adopted by the DVD Forum and renamed HD DVD the next year,after being voted down twice by Blu-ray Disc Association members, prompting the U.S. Department of Justice to make preliminary investigations into the situation.Three new members had to be invited and the voting rules changed before the vote finally passed.Blu-ray and HD DVD shared most of the same methods of encoding media onto disks with each other, using the same methods of encoding media onto disks as well as the default method of digital rights management[citation needed], AACS. Blu-ray discs have a higher storage capacity than HD DVD discs had (50 GB vs. 30 GB) and Blu-ray discs also have higher bandwidth (48Mbit/sec vs. 30Mbit/sec), while including more DRM in the specification. AACS encryption is mandatory for Blu-ray but optional for HD DVD.In the meantime, Sony spun off Professional Disc for DATA from the Blu-ray Disc project. It was essentially Blu-ray Disc with higher-quality media and components. The devices were too expensive for the consumer mass market. Instead, it was aimed at the professional data storage space market as a replacement for their line of 5.25″ MO drives. It was announced in October 2003, with the first devices shipping in December of the same year.