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DVD’s Relationship to Other Products and Technologies 71<br />
Issues?” in <strong>Chapter</strong> 1) is an annoyance. Laserdiscs have no copy protection<br />
and do not have regional differences other than PAL versus<br />
NTSC.<br />
• Recordable DVD recorders are increasingly affordable. Laserdisc<br />
recording, at a low of $250 per disc, was never available to general<br />
consumers.<br />
For more laserdisc info, see Leopold’s FAQ at www.cs.tut.fi/,leopold/<br />
Ld/FAQ/index.html and Bob Niland’s FAQs and overview at www.accessone.com/rjn/laser/laserdisc.html<br />
(overview reprinted from Widescreen<br />
Review Magazine).<br />
Can I Modify or Upgrade My Laserdisc Player to Play DVDs?<br />
No, DVD circuitry is completely different, the pickup laser is a different<br />
wavelength, and the tracking control is more precise. No hardware<br />
upgrades have been announced, and in any case they would be more<br />
expensive than buying a DVD player to put next to the laserdisc player.<br />
Do DVDs Support HDTV (DTV)? Will HDTV<br />
Make DVDs Obsolete?<br />
The short answers are partially and no.<br />
First, some quick definitions: HDTV encompasses both analog and digital<br />
TVs that have a 16:9 aspect ratio and approximately five times the resolution<br />
of standard TV (double vertical, double horizontal, and a wider<br />
aspect). Digital TV (DTV) applies to digital broadcasts in general and to the<br />
U.S. Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standard in specific.<br />
The ATSC standard includes both standard-definition (SD) and highdefinition<br />
(HD) digital formats. The notation H/DTV is often used to specifically<br />
refer to high-definition DTV.<br />
In December of 1996, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)<br />
approved the U.S. DTV standard. HDTVs became available in late 1998, but<br />
they are expensive and won’t become widespread for many years. DVDs<br />
are not HD, but they look great on HDTVs. Over 80 percent of the 2 million<br />
DTV sets sold in the United States in 2002 did not have tuners, indicating<br />
that their owners got them for watching DVDs.<br />
DVD-Video does not directly support HDTV. No digital HDTV standards<br />
were finalized when DVD was developed. In order to be compatible with<br />
existing televisions, DVD’s MPEG-2 video resolutions and frame rates are<br />
closely tied to NTSC and PAL, SECAM video formats (see <strong>Chapter</strong> 1’s “Is
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