Kees Schouhamer Immink - DVD and Blu-ray Disc

DVD and Blu-ray Disc

In 1993, Toshiba engineers developed the Super Density Disc, the successor of the Compact Disc. Immink was member of the Philips and Sony task force, which developed a competing disc format, called MultiMedia CD. Immink created EFMPlus, a more efficient successor of EFM used in CD. The electronics industry feared a repeat of the format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s. IBM's president, Lou Gerstner, urged them to adopt Immink’s EFMPlus coding scheme as EFM has a proven record. In September 1995, an agreement was made among the major industries: Philips/Sony surrendered to Toshiba's SuperDensity Disc and Toshiba accepted the EFMPlus modulation. The DVD encompasses the sound-only Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD-audio formats, developed independently by Sony and Toshiba, which are incompatible formats for delivering very high-fidelity audio content. SACD is in a format war with DVD-Audio, but neither has yet managed to replace audio CDs.

Immediately after the DVD standard was settled in 1996, Philips and Sony, disappointed after the DVD failure, decided to develop a next-generation blue-laser-based digital video recorder (DVR), which would be positioned as DVDs high-density successor. Philips and Sony set up a joint task force, where Immink and his co-workers developed DVRs, later called Blu-ray's, code design. In 2005, seven years after its design, the Blu-ray Disc was brought to market. In 2002, the DVD forum adopted an alternative format, the HD DVD. The two resulting standards had significant differences that made each incompatible with the other. The blue-laser format war with Toshiba’s HD DVD was settled in early 2008 when Toshiba withdrew their system effectively ending the high definition optical disc format war.