In the 90s of the last century, digital technology began to enter the lives of ordinary people, at that time, the emerging laser disc technology brought people a new audio and video experience, among them, two devices are the most well-known, that is, VCD and DVD.
Introduced in 1993, VCDs use laser reading technology to store approximately 74 minutes of compressed MPEG-1 video per 12-centimeter disc, making them lighter and more portable than previous tapes.
In addition, the price of VCD players is low, and even many DVD players are backward compatible with VCDs, so it quickly replaced VHS tapes and became the mainstream choice for family viewing in Asia and Southeast Asia.
Unlike tapes, which are prone to deterioration, VCDs are replayable and of consistent quality, and the low cost of copying has led to the emergence of pirated VCDs, which has further boosted their popularity.
For many Asian families, VCD's many advantages allowed it to quickly occupy the audio-visual market, not least because of its small size, a 12 cm disc could hold a movie, unlike VHS's bulky cassette tapes.
Moreover, the quality of its pictures has been significantly improved compared with VHS, with a resolution of 640x480 that can meet the needs of most families, and finally, the price of VCD cameras is really cost-effective compared to VHS recorders of thousands of yuan, which makes it popular with low- and middle-income families.
Subsequently, in 1997, DVD with larger storage capacity entered the public's field of vision, each DVD can hold a complete movie, and the picture quality is higher than that of VCD, DVD has a resolution of 720x480, supports Dolby Digital and DTS sound technology, and far surpasses VCD in terms of clarity and sound quality, laying its position in the high-end audio-visual market.
However, due to the high price of DVD players at that time, VCD still occupied a large number of low-end market shares, and in the 2000s, with the sharp decline in the price of DVD players, it gradually replaced VCD as a new generation of optical disc standards, and finally VCD finally withdrew from the stage of history and became a product of a bygone era.
However, history has not stood still, and the Internet and online video technology have gradually lost the appeal of discs, and people are now Xi choosing what they want to watch online rather than buying physical DVDs.
VCD and DVD players have basically disappeared from life, only a few families, or places still retain them, VCD and DVD, which once led the home entertainment revolution, eventually could not escape the fate of being eliminated by the times, and now our electronic products are developing very rapidly, and it is only a matter of time before they completely disappear from the family.