On September 26, 1996, Toshiba announced the first DVD player, the Toshiba SD-3000. It was released in Japan in November 1996 and initially cost ¥77,000, equivalent to about $770 US. It was the first consumer DVD player in the world, and of course, DVD became the successor to VHS. Ironically, the first DVD player was announced very close to 20 years after the first VHS VCR.
Problems with VHS
VHS had a good run, and in 1996 it still had about a decade left, but it was showing its age. It didn’t record at the full resolution of either NTSC or PAL video. Arguably in 1976 few people noticed because screens were comparatively small and the VCR connected over RF, causing signal degradation anyway. But by 1996, TV tubes were higher quality, most TVs had at least composite connections and many had higher-quality connections like S-Video or even component video.
From a consumer standpoint, tapes would wear out after repeated viewing and the need to rewind them was a bit of an inconvenience. People of a certain age remember VHS tapes from rental stores like Blockbuster having stickers on them that said, “Be kind, rewind!” to remind them to rewind tapes before returning them. Some stores even charged a fee if you didn’t rewind the tape.
From the TV and movie industry’s standpoint, VHS was a liability because it could record. Getting consumers hooked on a format that didn’t record would unlock potential additional revenue streams. Technology to inhibit copying VHS tapes existed but wasn’t perfect. DVD offered a chance to include copy prevention as part of the design. And the inability to record video from TV meant it would become much easier for studios to sell TV shows on DVD, to get an additional revenue stream beyond syndication.
The upside to consumers was that DVDs would look and sound better than VHS, and be more durable. As long as the disc didn’t scratch or break, it could last nearly forever. DVD resolution was 720×480 in NTSC markets and 720×576 in PAL markets.
Earlier videodisc formats
DVD wasn’t the first videodisc format. Laserdisc and Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED) were two earlier examples of media that worked on disc, rather than tape. But they were both analog formats, and their discs were larger than CDs, closer in size to vinyl records. DVD would use media the same size as a music CD, and like CD, it would be digital.
Why being the first DVD player didn’t matter much
There’s nothing particularly special about the Toshiba SD-3000 other than being the first DVD player. It sold in Japan for a few months before giving way to newer models, and I can’t find evidence it was ever exported. Sony started exporting DVD players to other markets, including the United States, in April 1997. In 1997, DVD players ranged in price from about $600 to $1,000, which calculates to about $1,216 to $2,025 in 2026 dollars.
But prices came down quickly. And in 2001, DVD players outsold VCRs. Very inexpensive off-brand DVD players proliferated in the early 2000s, costing as little as $15. At that price, the player cost less than the discs consumers were watching in it. At DVD’s peak, 80% of Americans owned a DVD player.
DVD gave way to Blu-ray in the following decade, as HDTV became more common and showed the limitations of the DVD format. HDTVs could upscale DVD, but Blu-ray encoded at 1920×1080 looked better.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
The YouTuber Asianiometry has just published a fascinating video about the advent of DVD. I never realised a format war was narrowly averted between Sony & Philips backing one standard versus Toshiba & Time Warner with a competitor. Apparently IBM was instrumental in brokering an agreement between the two.
Looking back, I see that if the industry had adopted HD DVD, we might have extended the lifespan of physical media; it was cheaper to implement and cheaper to manufacture—both the players and the discs.
Of course, Blu-ray came along to revolutionize the market and seemed like alien technology when it first appeared, but from an economic standpoint, HD DVD might have been the better long-term option.
The funniest thing is the variation in bitrate a DVD can have from one video to another, not to mention the diversity of audio codecs.
I have DVDs with bitrates under 4500 kbps, while others almost hit the 10 Mbps limit; regarding audio codecs, I have live concert DVDs with a mix of AC3 and DTS, and others that even include uncompressed PCM tracks.
Nowadays, I have all my DVDs digitized on my PC and converted to H.264/AAC (using AC3 for 5.1 tracks).
I am not a hunter and gatherer, so hording videos was not my thing. Regardless which media.
I was waiting for the first HDD recorder and jumped the moment the first one poped up in a shop.
Was roling my eyes when sales guys tried to sell DVD recorders while HDD recorders stood side by side. ?
The Blu-ray v HD-DVD format war came up briefly on the AVforums 20th anniversary podcast recently. A couple of the contributors claimed HD-DVD offered higher picture quality than Blu-ray, but looking into it that seems not to be the case – Blu-ray had a higher storage capacity. Besides, Sony was determined to push its standard via the PS3 and its ownership of a movie studio.
I’m not sure if HD-DVD would have fared any better than Blu-ray over the long term. Ultimately, broadband speeds would still have got faster, streaming services would still have started up, and consumers would still have preferred the convenience of movie streaming. And in the games industry, publishers would still have wanted the lower cost of digital distribution and the way it enables them to kill the second-hand games market.