DVD History

=>DVD History <=

The first DVD players and discs
were available in November
1996 in Japan, March 1997 in
... the United States, 1998 in
Europe and in 1999 in
Australia. Major U.S. retailers Circuit City and Best Buy
stopped selling VHS tapes in
2002 and 2003, respectively. In
June 2005, Wal-Mart and
several other retailers
announced plans to phase out the VHS format entirely, in
favor of the more popular
DVD format. According to the
Digital Entertainment Group
(DEG), all DVD sales and rentals
totaled $21.2 billion in 2004. In 2000, Sony released its
PlayStation 2 console in Japan.
In addition to playing video
games developed for the
system it was also able to
play DVD movies. This proved to be a huge selling point
because the PS2 cost about the
same as DVD player but it
could do a whole lot more. As
a result, many electronic
stores that normally did not carry video game consoles
carried PS2s. Following on
with this tradition Sony has
decided to implement one of
DVD’s possible successors, Blu-
ray, into its next PlayStation console currently known as
the PlayStation 3. Microsoft’s
Xbox, released a year after
the PlayStation 2, also had the
capability to play DVD discs
with an add-on kit, cementing the DVD’s place in video game
consoles.