History Platform / OpticalDisc

As of 2010, optical discs are the only economical way to sell high-quality digital music, video, and software in a large scale on a physical medium. UsefulNotes/FlashMemory cards can hold Platform/{{MP3}}s, photos, and small programs, but not CD-quality music, full-length movies, or video games that are trying to look like full-length movies. Well, they could, ''technically'', do so, but given that the cost of a Flash card comparable to a Platform/BluRay disc in capacity is about ten times higher, this is hardly a sane thing to do, though with the recent drop in prices certain UsefulNotes/FlashMemory manufacturers like San Disk are testing the waters with digital music sales, which require less space and thus cheaper cards.

The first commercially available format of optical disc was the UsefulNotes/LaserDisc, which encoded analog data. Unfortunately, they were too far ahead of their time, and sold poorly in a world that was still just getting used to [=VCRs=]. The technology, which was introduced by MCA [=DiscoVision=] in 1978, eventually ended up at Pioneer (where it was kept on life support well into the DVD era).

The first optical discs to actually catch on were UsefulNotes/{{Compact Disc}}s ([=CDs=] for short), which encoded digital data instead of analog; this would set a precedent for all later formats of optical disc. They were introduced in 1982, but were slow to catch on due to player prices being generally expensive at first and only gradually decreasing between 1985 and 1989, with 1987 being the first year where the format outsold releases on the earlier vinyl record format. Writable versions showed up around 1990, but were far too expensive for anyone outside the CD mastering world to use until the first inexpensive PC writers came out around 1998.

* UsefulNotes/{{DVD}}s (introduced in 1996 in Japan and 1997 internationally, accepted instantly)

* UsefulNotes/BluRay, also invented approx. 2006, the apparent winner of the hi-def movie disc format war against HD-DVD (they became common around the end of 2009); official Platform/PlayStation3 disc format.

The [=MiniDisc=], invented around 1989 and brought to market in 1992, is an edge case - it ''looks'' optical, or would if you broke it out of its casing, and it's read with a laser, but it's written with a magnet, so it's both this and a UsefulNotes/MagneticDisk. There were also bigger, non-proprietary "magneto-optical" discs made for [=PCs=] and Macs, but they never caught on all that well [[AmericansHateTingle (at least not in the U.S.)]] and were doomed when the zip drive and cheap CD-Rs came about in the late 1990s, though they were popular with musicians and journalists as an alternative to DAT.

The most recent generation of discs - HD-[=DVDs=] and [[UsefulNotes/BluRay Blu-rays]] - can store tens of gigabytes on a single disc easily and reliably.

As of 2010, optical discs are the only economical way to sell high-quality digital music, video, and software in a large scale on a physical medium. UsefulNotes/FlashMemory cards can hold UsefulNotes/{{MP3}}s, photos, and small programs, but not CD-quality music, full-length movies, or video games that are trying to look like full-length movies. Well, they could, ''technically'', do so, but given that the cost of a Flash card comparable to a UsefulNotes/BluRay disc in capacity is about ten times higher, this is hardly a sane thing to do, though with the recent drop in prices certain UsefulNotes/FlashMemory manufacturers like San Disk are testing the waters with digital music sales, which require less space and thus cheaper cards.

* Universal Media Discs, aka [=UMDs=], the disc format of the UsefulNotes/PlayStationPortable

* UsefulNotes/BluRay, also invented approx. 2006, the apparent winner of the hi-def movie disc format war against HD-DVD (they became common around the end of 2009); official UsefulNotes/{{PlayStation 3}} disc format.

Optical discs are a cheap, effective, and reliable way to get big files from point A to point B. When the CD finally became popular for the first time, it was believed that they were NighInvulnerable. This was never quite true, but [=CDs=] themselves and their more advanced kin don't wear out from use like vinyl records, magnetic tapes, or film stock (their players do, but not the discs themselves); on the computer side of things, a CD or DVD was (and still is) ''far'' less vulnerable to dust and debris than a magnetic disk of the same capacity.[[note]]Floppy disks, where the magnetic medium is exposed to the air when the disk is inserted, struggle to exceed 200 megabytes even with the ruggedised, high-capacity media used by the zip drive and other "superfloppy" formats, while hard drives can attain capacities in the several-terabyte range, but at the cost of needing hermetically-sealed enclosures and being far more vulnerable to mechanical shock, as they can only attain these high capacities by holding the read/write head mere microns from the disk surface, close enough that a sharp bump or even a microscopic speck of dust can make the head smash into the surface of the disk, [[FromBadToWorse scraping against the surface of the medium and ripping loose large quantities of secondary debris]]; this is known as a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_crash head crash]], and invariably results in a catastrophic failure of the drive. In contrast, since optical disks use laser light, which can be focused onto a tiny area to a degree that magnetic fields can't, their read-write heads can be much further from the surface of the disk than with magnetic disks; as a result, there are (prototype) optical disks that can store upwards of 200 gigabytes on a single disk, despite the storage medium being exposed to the elements - a thousand times greater than even the best magnetic disks using (even partially and temporarily) exposed media.[[/note]] These days, it costs almost nothing to print a CD or DVD (even the writable varieties); most of the cost of pre-recorded [=CDs=] and [=DVDs=] comes from the intellectual property. The dollar [=DVDs=] in dollar stores have public domain TV shows and films, and very little else.

Vinyl records have made a comeback, but they're comparatively expensive to manufacture, the few remaining pressing plants are overburdened and the high demand combined with inherent imprecision of vinyl manufacturing means a high defect rate for [=LPs=] compared to optical media. If you thought that dips in vinyl quality control was just a symptom of the "Vinyl Revival", you'd be surprised to learn that this was an issue in the 1970s, at least for American pressings, according to [[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/mud-on-the-tracks-defective-records-40273/ a 1978 article]] in ''Magazine/RollingStone'' (European and Japanese pressings, then and now, are highly coveted by collectors due to their higher quality control). Vinyl records are also just as vulnerable to dust and debris as optical discs are, lacking any error correction. Most of the time, this will manifest as clicks, pops or other surface noise even as the disc remains playable, but more severe cases can result in skips or even "locked grooves", where the record repeats on a passage as the familiar "BrokenRecord" sound. In extreme cases, the stylus can be damaged. This is one reason many serious vinyl fans obsessively clean their records before playing. Records are also susceptible to warping, especially if stacked horizontally or exposed to heat.

As of 2010, optical discs are the only economical way to sell high-quality digital music, video, and software in a large scale on a physical medium. UsefulNotes/FlashMemory cards can hold UsefulNotes/{{MP3}}s, photos, and small programs, but not CD-quality music, full-length movies, or video games that are trying to look like full-length movies. Well, they could, ''technically'', do so, but given that the cost of a Flash card comparable to a UsefulNotes/BluRay disc in capacity is about ten times higher, this is hardly a sane thing to do, though with the recent drop in prices certain UsefulNotes/FlashMemory manufacturers like San Disk are testing the waters with digital music sales, which require less space and thus cheaper cards. Vinyl records have made a comeback, but they're comparatively expensive to manufacture, the few remaining pressing plants are overburdened and the high demand combined with inherent imprecision of vinyl manufacturing means a high defect rate for [=LPs=] compared to optical media. If you thought that dips in vinyl quality control was just a symptom of the "Vinyl Revival", you'd be surprised to learn that this was an issue in the 1970s, at least for American pressings, according to [[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/mud-on-the-tracks-defective-records-40273/ a 1978 article]] in ''Magazine/RollingStone'' (European and Japanese pressings, then and now, are highly coveted by collectors due to their higher quality control). Vinyl records are also just as vulnerable to dust and debris as optical discs are, lacking any error correction. Most of the time, this will manifest as clicks, pops or other surface noise even as the disc remains playable, but more severe cases can result in skips or even "locked grooves", where the record repeats on a passage as the familiar "BrokenRecord" sound. In extreme cases, the stylus can be damaged. This is one reason many serious vinyl fans obsessively clean their records before playing. Records are also susceptible to warping, especially if stacked horizontally or exposed to heat.