Trend 4: DVD TAKES THE DAY [tradingsadvantage]

Trend 4: DVD TAKES THE DAY [tradingsadvantage]

harriman-house.com 3 new, exclusive strategies from a master spread bettor. Take your spread betting to the next level with these proven, documented exclusive strategies - right out of the box. Spread betting expert and bestselling author Malcolm Pryor takes viewers through every stage of successfully setting up and executing three brand new spread betting strategies. Each with a thoroughly demonstrated edge, they work on all time frames and are suitable for traders of all levels of experience. You can use them to start banking profits right away. A one-on-one course of unbeatable depth A two-hour DVD with accompanying workbook, this is the most comprehensive one-on-one spread betting training course available. Pryor unveils the details of three strategies, both trend-following and counter-trend, with a blend of in-chart demonstration and to-camera presentation. Featuring more than 20 video modules, including - alongside the detailed explanation of the three strategies - a refresher on key trading concepts, plus advanced insights on adapting and constructing your own strategies. You also get personal support from Malcolm and other traders via access to the exclusive members' area of the www.spreadbettingcentral.co.uk forums.

tradingsadvantage.blogspot.com Spread Betting Techniques (DVD), by Malcolm Pryor

... Essentials of Foreign Exchange Trading (John Wiley & Sons, 2009) and Essentials of Technical Analysis for Financial Markets (John Wiley & Sons, 2010), as well as author/speaker for the instructional video DVD set, High-Probability Trend Following ... My Daily Analysis: Finding High-Probability Trading Setups

Supplementing high-def TV technology, DVD and Blu-ray players replaced VHS in short order

Now you don't have to miss "Kojak" because you're watching "Columbo" (or vice versa), crowed 1976 Sony Betamax ad copy that drew millions of people to buy a revolutionary new device called the videocassette recorder (VCR).

 

While its initial pull was home video recording, most VCR users didn't know how the set the clocks on their decks and so couldn't record a thing. The flashing "12:00" on the VCR became a national punchline. It was clear that Americans wanted VCRs so that they could rent and watch prerecorded movies, not record programs.

 

But as users started buying expensive 720 - and 1080 - line HDTVs, they gasped at the suddenly faded and grainy quality of 220-line VHS tapes and started to question their big-screen investments.

Fortunately, HDTV makers and Hollywood studios had anticipated this situation and had been working on a high-quality digital VHS alternative.

 

When the first DVD players from pioneer, Toshiba, and Sony hit the store shelves in February 1997, their compact, durable, and high-quality digital 480-line format quickly became a highly desirable replacement for fragile, low-resolution VHS cassettes. Within five years, half of all American households had a DVD player, and today more than 90 percent have at least one DVD player, and today more than 90 percent have at least one DVD or high-definition Blu0ray device.

 

But the gestation period of DVD may have been longer than its life as a product.

 

Video Disc Pretenders

 

Following the introduction of the compact disc in 1982, putting video on an optical disc was the next logical step.

Considering the return on inventing a new video hardware format, no one was surprised when several video disc formats emerged.

 

While the CD was being developed, so was its sibling video version- the laserdisc, which produced a picture twice as good as VHS. The 12-inch disc, however, proved too large for consumers now used to five-inch CDs.

 

Competing with the laser disc was a 12-inch product from RCA named the Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED), which used a physical needle to rea information from a video disc, much like a record player - but the public was even less interested in CED than it was in the laserdisc. After spending millions and selling only a half million players, RCA dropped CED in 1984.

 

In the late 1980s several companies used MPEG 1 video discs, including CD Video (CDV), which held five minutes of MPEG 1 compressed video and 25 mimutes of digital audio. Philips promoted CD-Interactive (CD-i). But the road to what eventually became DVD didn't open up until the higher-quality MPEG 2 compression appeared in November 1994.

 

Toshiba vs. Sony/Philips

 

By the mid-1990s, parallel MPEG 2- based CD - sized digital video disc efforts were under way. Toshiba, in partnership with Warner Brothers ans supported by Matsushita, the parent company of Panasonic, was working on a format - officially Super Density (SD) but dubbed "Taz" after Tasmanian Devil cartoon character from Warner's Looney Toons. Meanwhile, Sony and Philips, the original developers of the CD, enlisted such computer industry giants as IBM, Apple, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard to ensure that its MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD) format was PC-compatible.

 

With a digital videodisc format war looming, the two sides enlisted IBM to lead a multicompany committee to mediate a solution. After months of meeting and arm twisting by IBM for the two sides to merge their formats, it was announced at the fall COMDEX trade show in November 1995 that a new digital versatile disc (DVD) format had been agreed upon. It took another year for the studios and the hardware makers to wrangle out a content protection system to guard against illegal copying of movies committed to digital perfection.

 

After nearly 15 years of video-on-CD development, the first DVD decks from Toshiba and Panasonic went on sale finally in March 1997, along with the first prerecorded DVD titles.

 

High-Def Format War

When high-def TV launched in the late 1990s, it was obvious that both DVD hardware makers and Hollywood studios would develop a high-definition video disc format. In February 2002 Hitachi, LG, Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Thomson announced a high-definition DVD format named Blu-ray. Less than a month later, the DVD Forum's steering group approved the HD-DVD standard, codeveloped by Toshiba and NEC. To put it briefly, the same protagonists who had faced off on DVD just a few years before were coming back into the arena.

 

Without any objective and powerful mediator (such as IBM had been a decade earlier), however, the two high-def DVD camps couldn't come to a merged format accord. So each released competing and incompatible hardware and movie titles in mid-2006. As expected, consumers were unwilling to invest in what might be a future obsolete format, and sales of both formats flagged. Blu-ray's advantage in the number of supporting manufacturers finally won the day, and Toshiba abandoned HD-DVD in early 2008.

 

Source: American Heritage's Invention and Technology (The Magazine of Innovation)

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