Hi, Yes, we have to talk about the war. No, not the war of the late 1970s Beta versus VHS Sony versus JVC where Sony famously lost the war JVC and VHS One No, we're going to talk about the Second World War of 2006 Blu-ray vs. HD DVD and this time around, the Second World War. There are a lot more players involved.

Unlike the video cassette format war of the late 1970s, which was a pretty simple fight. it was basically Sony versus JVC and Sony lost because there, well, technically more superior Betamax format. It was just bigger, more expensive, and could only hold one hour of material versus two hours. So that was pretty much a no-brainer decision for the consumer and the rental market.

So if you can fit a whole movie on a tape and the machines were cheaper, why wouldn't you go with VHS And it wore lasted, you know, five, six, maybe seven years. But VHS eventually won out because it was just good enough and did the job plan. It was cheaper. Pretty simple fight in the end.

but in 2005 and 2006, World War two started the high-definition optical format war. Basically, Toshiba vs. Sony were the figureheads of pushing the technology, but they had an impressive array of companies on their side, including basically three of the big production movie production companies on both side, so it was a pretty even fight. And they Won wasn't necessarily really cheaper than the other.

they both were similar quality. Both were held a similar amount of material things like that, so there wasn't a huge amount of difference, so it was a much more complicated fight. many more players, lot higher stakes and as you know, Blu-ray won the fight because you can get Blu-ray now and you can't get HD DVD And this war was much quicker than the video cassette war the late 70s. This one only took two years from when the first machines came out to when Toshiba finally threw in the towel and said hey, thanks for all the fish but we're out of here and what it came down to in the end is not so much any technical details.

Although Blu-ray had some digital rights management stuff which a lot you know some of the players and studios are really liked. It came down to in 2007 Blockbuster decided the huge movie chain who's now, well, who famously turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix So they went out of business. So Blockbuster, the biggest video rental a chain in the world or the U.s. I decided that they're going to side with Blu-ray and that was pretty much one of the final nails in the coffin.

But then a lot of the studios said ah, we're going to support both or we're moving over to Blu-ray and there was a shift of alliances and things like that towards Blu-ray. And well, once that Avalanche happened, it didn't take long at all. And in 2008 Toshiba they knew they losing the fight. So you know last straw they went right.

We're going to slash the price in half of our players and well, everyone just went. Huh? Let's go to Blockbuster and rent a blu-ray Oops. So in the end it was fairly simple matter of content. You could go out and rent blu-ray content you couldn't really rent much.

HD DVD and at Avalanched an Blu-ray won. So anyway, Sony avenged their defeat in the late 70s and won the digital optical format war. But hey, let's take a look at what happened to HD DVD by taking a look at the world's first HD DVD player the Toshiba HDX a 1. It's vintage tear down time.

haha. Let's go and here it is. the original: HD DVD player from Toshiba the HDX A1 and this is one I believe like one of the first batch because it was manufactured in February 2006 a month before they actually made the official release of this thing. There's not much to it real.

There's an open closed that's obviously like you know, designed to be mostly operated with the remote control. but you can, actually, you know, put it, maybe put a disc in and just press play I Don't know what the extension stuff is. We'll have to read the manual, but hmm. One of the first things you notice is that it is heavy.

It's about nine kilos. It really is a solid bit acute. There's a serial number for those playing log at home and what else we got on here. We've got our obligatory our five and one channel audio out of course to channel option if you don't like that surround sound rubbish.

and of course the optical and coaxial digital outputs. HDMI output fancy pantsy for the time and for Legacy and quote, most gear you had the component video output and for Legacy Legacy of course you had composite or s-video thank you very much and a LAN connection. Oh my goodness. could it connect to the interwebs? Unfortunately I've tried it and it doesn't work.

What? What? Wha? What? I Love is the old-school control Rs-232 so presumably like it can be used in like studios and other systems where they might automate stuff and things like that. Perhaps definitely to read the manual on what that one can do. So I Expect that inside of this is not going to be built down for a price. This is the world's first HD DVD Player They would have over an engineered this to the hilt, probably gave very little consideration to our production bond cost and stuff like that.

They just wanted to showcase the technology they needed. a rock-solid player that's what probably weighs so much the lead plates in the thing just to weigh it down and make it feel like it's real tank by the way. Thank you very much to Mark Stuart from Frankston and Victoria for us sending this one in. So let's take a peek inside the years of not being kind.

it's a little bit rusted, but hello, we're in like Flynn beauty will that wah? So check it out. We've got our flat flex running everywhere. main processor board clearly on the top just doing all the digital stuff. and they've got an analogue board down the bottom here for all the interface and stuff like that.

beautiful-looking he'd seen copper pipe heatsink with that wall. The fence was in a pretty little squirrel cage fan that blows that out. So we've got a jewel. stay up a bit how you doing I'll give you one guess what's under there.

it is socketed. Give you a clue it's on the front panel. look at that. Oh Quite proud of it.

Sounded exciting back then. Shark Processor from Analog devices thank you very much. But wait, hold on to your hats if we pan up here. Got some Intel stuff I've got some Xilinx FPGA action.

but check it out. We've got no less than four shark processes. We're a DSP 21 to 6 to 2 for those playing along at home, but hang on, that's just one of them. Let's see if they're all the same 21 to 6, 2, but 21 to 6, 6 and 21 to 6 6 hmm pairs now based on their physical location and that we've got 4 of them.

If you have a look here, you can probably see some of the traces heading off from that particular shark processor. Over to that ribbon cable, which of course heads down and goes down to the sound output. So that's probably dedicated sound processor right there. And likewise, these ones are probably hopping over here dedicated to each individual task by the looks of it, over to the front.

So hmm, they just offload in processor tasks to these individual RDSP processes. Now for mass consumer adoption products, a bond cost and consolidate part consolidation. Everything else matters, but on, you know, leading-edge stuff like this. the first one ever, one that's designed for the early adopters.

You know, price really doesn't matter, a huge amount, then it's and you want to get to market. Well, you can separate the design Tosh You can have like a design team just working on that. this you know, the software for that for processing the audio, another one for processing the video, so on. So from a design team point of view, you could split that up.

Perhaps maybe that's one of the reasons behind it? Maybe the main processor, which we haven't seen yet down here couldn't do it all. But a yeah, there clearly is four separate processes at DSP processes at least Wow what's under there? Well, that wasn't too hard to find out. It's a broad Kahn BCM 74 one one and this is a HD video decoder. So actually look at the data sheet.

it's actually designed for HD DVD players and blu-ray players to decode the MPEG streams. Now as it turns out, an analysis by a company called I Supply at the time of the release actually I did the Bond costing on this unit and they said that it came out to $200 more than what they are selling it for. So I'll make it a two hundred dollar loss on each unit just to try and get into the market. They said there were two hundred and forty-seven dollars just worth of chips on here.

just chips, not any of the other hardware and 125 bucks was just spent on memory including this dim module here. This high-neck site. there we go for those playing along at home. He loved their dim modules.

They weren't cheap at the time. plus all the other memory are on here. or the US Pension brand flash memory and all the other Rhodey rams and stuff for various processes. Check this out! I Originally thought that this little module here might have had something to do with the serial columns maybe with some dedicated serial conference processes just by the proximity of it here.

but it's from M-systems who were one of the pioneers of our flash based you know, solid state sup memory and stuff like that and flip it over. And tada, what do we have? L-systems flash disc pioneers? A little isn't a kangaroo - rabbit? Hmm. Anyway, um yeah, this is basically the equivalent to a modern solid-state drive. That's what they got here.

Obviously some you know slow us I'm serial interface based on the pins. That good. There you go there. you go for your Spartan aficionados xc3 S1000 which is all the rage at the time and they've got a couple of Spartans around here and oh that one, it's not a Spartan What's that? Anyway, they're just used as a glue logic for most of the other stuff I would suspect.

So we're getting closer and closer to our mystery process, so let's have a look what's under this puppy got you Intel and we're surrounded by more Intel So you can guess what the main process is going to be. Come on, answers on the back of a postcard, Please! And we're in like Flynn And that looks for all the world like an old-school Pentium Jeez no. I don't have to get the heat out. So that really is an expensive and hard-hitting solution for basically what is just a you know, a DVD player yet in HD But that's basically all it is.

Read it off the disk, decode it, and now put it to the HDMI or analog outputs. It's like a single chip solution these days, but hey back then. Okay, they didn't have the single citizen chip solutions, but geez, I don't know all that you know like a Pentium is pretty darn heavy hitting. I Really like the design of this.

it just flipped out with these are clips. They're really nice. There's the motor for the flap what opens up when the drive comes out. But looky what we have here.

it looks like a standard PC Drive Wow, that's all they've done. It's basically a PC with a standard 5 and 1/4 inch HD DVD player in it. So it's like they developed this and then just went well. like a PC on it.

That's it. There's our product and I Really like the design even more because they split it into this top and bottom half and this just like slides and then lifts off to bring their cables out. and that is fantastic Systems Design: I Like that. and if you're wondering what parts are on the front panel or the PCBs are labeled Toshiba but that chip in there? not sure if you can see it, but that's a Jo see a Japan radio call and the power supply is quite nice and neatly laid out.

and Nippon chemi-con caps spared no expense and pretty standard fare for all your analog inputs and digital outputs and nice stuff like that. Our we've got a Mo Pioneer main chipset down in the bottom there and a lot of devices driver down there for your component video and HDMI driver chip. Which ones that oh, is that a silicon image? I Haven't seen one of those in a while. So there you have it that looks like it was the world's first HD DVD PC drive and January 2006 I Just use a standard.

Obviously they had plans to, you know? Well, let's just make that waking PC drive and then we'll just use that in our main products. I'm not sure if further HD DVD Players I did the same thing. but yeah, it's just a PC drive with a Pentium processor running what? Windows CE E or something? maybe. So let's have a look inside this first and what was it the only generation I don't know I Probably closed HD DVD Drive because it only lasted two years before they abandon the format.

so I'm not sure if they were able to do a revised version of this. Anyway, this is a Hardware version 2.0 and Thermia version 2.0 But as I said, this is a January 2006 model. So this is before they made the announcement of the world's first HD DVD player. So obviously this is the first production to run, they never released the other one.

Take a few screws off and Tada, we're in like Flynn Check it out. Got ourselves some thermal pads on there which are depressed specifically in the middle to go down onto the chips there to get the heat out. but that's a lot of business for a DVD drive. I Didn't like to compare it to a modern one and it's an NEC job' not Toshiba So as it turns out, these three parts here are custom NEC jobs they like Big Gatorades We've seen those before.

We know various Oh the products so they're not fully custom silicon. I Don't think they're probably just, you know, massive gate arrays that they program to do. all the housekeeping and stuff like that. And the H8 fanboys go, Why order there? it is.

that's the main processor in it. and obviously if you just take a look at the two gate arrays here, this one is right next to the IDE port over here. So obviously that one's doing the IDE interface and comms interface, all that sort of jazz and this one over here most likely doing a lot of the processing coming out from the laser that coming out from the head and laser diode and everything else. So that's you know, and this and the processor up here.

That H8 processor is just probably doing housekeeping stuff things like that. but you know, or you grew up work flowing from here into here into here what this one is doing around there. something to do with the read as well. that might be a some sort of you know data formatter or something like that, perhaps I Don't know.

just guessing there's an interesting part I've never seen before. Check it out. like what is it this exclamation mode PWM obviously better pulse width modulation and judging by the pretty thickish traces coming out of here, this is obviously you know stepper motor drive and things like that. And we've got ourselves a thermal pad on The top there and it folds out very nicely to the backside there.

I Don't mind that at all. Looks like there's the micro switch on the front that you can poke you, so note, that's for that. No, that's for the eject by. it's the eject button.

I Thought that was the little one that you poked through. It's not. It looks like we have that. Let me, the wires are soldered permanently onto here under the board.

That's a bit how you're doing for the looks like for the transport motor in there to transport the disc in. Curiously, there's a nice little lever switch over there. I Really like that. Well, I could have a fondle with that all day long that rule.

And as for the disk mechanism, more, there's our laser on. There won't be one of those, Um, that would be the 405 nanometers blue laser. Exactly the same lasers used in Blu-ray I'm not sure about outputs our power differences, but there is the same 405 nanometer blue laser in them. And of course the the lower wavelength can get more data on the disk.

And there's a little step a worm drive there that drives the head back and forth and it, you know. And there's the motor drive. That and that motor drive chip we saw on the front is driving the spindle down there. and that's about all she wrote.

Really, that's it. The laser that moves back and forth across the disc and the disc rotates. Hm. Now you can see across here that we've got a three laser diodes here and the reason we've got three is because one is going to be the 405 nanometer blue laser diode and those thick traces there I think are for that.

one and the other two are going to be for the DVD because it's going to be a combo. The drive: it's backward compatible, so one's going to be for the DVD and another one's going to be for the CD Player option gets 1 cm is backward compatible with CD right back to CD So there are three laser diodes combining through this one optical mechanism in the center. well look near that. We've got three little trimmer pots there we go.

They would be adjusted by the Oompa-loompas at the factory with their tongue at the right angle. Just it. it. get it just right and the whole thing's mounted on rubber.

Compliance in there. Look at that. I can wiggle that around. It's very rubbery.

trust me. That's to take out the any vibration from the unit and coupled through anything that's sitting on better things. Built like a brick? Dunny. Anyway, so I don't know how much it needed that, but anyway, they have done that.

You know it can of course it and know this is designed for Pcs of course a general-purpose So yeah, it could be sitting in someone's PC in the van, vibration and all sorts of crap in there. So it's a really nice little mount. like a wiggle that all day. you can see that controlling.

V So the tray mechanism like that. and that's why they close that. you know that jammed hole is you have that and the frappe. You stick your screwdriver all the way in there.

Bingo. It manually opens your tray. you can pull it out. Oh, now we're getting somewhere.

I Like how this comes apart by the way, you died. Practically no screws on it. You just take the tray, eject the tray manually, and you just and it just pops out. So fantastic.

Look what? that looks green? That was green. We've been ripped off. Supposed to be blue. Anyway, Neato.

Well, we love our adjustment trimmers I Wonder if they have any of those these days? But anyway, there's our lens on top. but people think that would be like just the laser diode sitting on to the bottom. No, it doesn't work like that. They've got a extensive lens mechanism and beam splitters and all sorts of stuff, not only to y-column 8 and focus that beam, but also to split it off to the laser power level sensor and the focus and tracking sensors and stuff like that.

so it's a bit more complicated than that. Another couple of trimmers down in there, so you can see the dye there directly on the flat flex, so that's going into something under there, which we will remains to be seen what and then on this side as well. I've also got another flat flex going into this block on the other side of the lens here and what that one's doing again I don't know and you'll notice that spring-loaded head alignment screw there that'd be adjusting the angle of that I would suspect. Well, this is absolutely fascinating if we take off this lens assembly on the top.

I'll show you that in a minute. We saw this ASIC on flex before I Didn't know what that was going down into, but look, it looks to be going into a glass plate which has got to be some sort of our controlled filter shuddery type thing. It's like it. you know, some sort of like LCD filter shutter type system so that is absolutely remarkable.

Didn't expect to find something like that in here Wow and that's under the lens assembly. so if I take the lens assembly and flip it over here, there we go. you can see how they all lots of pretty colors down in there so you can see how that is just some sort of lens assembly. I Wouldn't pretend to know the optics that's going on in there, but yeah, fascinating.

So if I take the metal bracket off the top of that and sort of look down in there, what do we got? see if I can lift lift that out. Wow gotcha. Well look. five wires running either.

So running over to that. Oh, that's interesting. Okay, so there was nothing in that, nothing in that plastic part down there at all. By the looks of it, it was just a holder for these are connecting wires which go over to the other side and they're doing what electrically? It's fascinating, but actually as you can see, that's the one that's closest to the disk.

And it's not the laser diet. Of course, it's just the optics and that looks to be encased by to maintenance. Wow Okay, so what we've got here is the focus lens assembly that effectively floats inside that may be filled between our two magnets there and there will be getting feedback. I Mean that's what all this sorry the interface here is for.

They'd be getting feedback from that, generating an error signal, and then compensating very minutely your comments and problems. They wouldn't even see it adjust in for the current, our focus position, and everything else. So yeah, that's great. It just floats in there on that.

Come the Warriors cuz it's brilliant. It's great I Love it and that can move in more than one axes to not only can it go up and down like that too, just the add water track the focus they'd be. you know, error feedback signaling them to compensate for the spot size on the disk getting larger or smaller and then it could compensate for that. but it can also move in that axes back and forth to adjust the tracking side-to-side on the actual track that it's currently on and back on.

What I call the topside? Here we can see this little optical cube here with the split right through the middle at 45 degrees like that. That of course allows light to pass through but also taps some off so that would be you know could be going into your laser power sensor or whatnot. just you know, getting some at tap off there, but it's designed to go straight through and then book shoot out there as well. You know, this certainly looks a lot more complicated than what you'd find in a modern blu-ray drive.

I'm sure if you tore down a modern blu-ray drive which is essentially exactly the same thing. remember, it's doing exactly the same. Exactly the same blue laser diode in there 405 nanometers. it's doing the same focusing and track in and everything else.

But yeah, I mean you know it is probably still doing something like this. I've got well I mean bloody magnets and stuff down? Ah, you know, but it's just yeah, a lot more refined. I'm a given that things do tend to advance in my car 15 years. so yeah, it wouldn't be this complicated in a modern one, but this is the first generation.

DVD HD DVD Drive and where that light comes out - AHA that is tapping off into I've been sit down in there, but that looks like our laser power monitor sensor I might see if I can get that board out. It's not just glued in because it's not screws in there. But yeah, so that's tapping off. So our lasers guys.

So this is our laser diode here, no doubt. So it's shooting straight out there. but some of that's being tucked off into the laser power monitor. So I can feedback and I know and control the exact amount of light that it needs to output because you know reading and writing, power levels and other things are different.

Sure enough, let's just stuck on there. I Just flipped that out and there you go. they're there. Believe that's the laser power monitor sensor.

Cute. Pretty okay. so we're going to lead the Dyer shooting out there. Jump tips that off into our laser power monitor down in there.

it goes into here and I haven't got a fully exposed, but we can have a look on the other side here if we flip that out of the way. We've got a couple of angled lenses in there angled assemblies that really unlike the light, has to bounce out there and then it's got to come in here. and then this angled assembly somehow gets that through into here so it's not quite that four. Oh, it could be 45 degrees.

Yep, I think it might be and so it angles it into this assembly here, which then we have our angled. Yeah, you probably can't see that there we go. There's our 90 degree angled mirror or whatnot there, but it's transparent I can see through that so may if they got another set. Looks like they have another sensor on the other side of that might flip that one off in a second, but then it comes up at right angles.

of course, through this controlled. I'm going to call it an LCD type assembly, but you know it's probably not the right. Like you know it could be liquid crystal based, but whether or not that's a filter or some other shutter or something, I'm not entirely sure, but that's doing anyway. It is electronically controlled lens that's for sure.

and then that goes up into the top focus assembly up there, which then goes onto the disk. Sure enough, on the other side of that lens, there goes some of the light goes through and it go, ah, you know I think I pulled it away. Oops, there is or was a sensor still attached there. Oops.

My guess is that's likely to be the tracking focus diode sensing array on that side just before it goes out. Oh yes, I Pointed out those two lenses there earlier. so there's four elements. There's going to be a fifth one in here, so there's going to be five elements just there, plus the another element there to bend.

at 90 degrees. and also get some through to that sensor over there. that really, there's a lot of optics involved in this thing. It's absolutely incredible, but we're not done yet.

If that's our main blue laser diode, we've got another one over here by the looks of it because we've got the same I can't get into this down in here, but it looks to be tap once again tapping off here into another probably laser power sensor. It looks different to the other one. it is slightly different. so my guess would be that this is a dual wavelength iDrive and this is your more traditional wire red laser that you're getting your rough CD type drives.

So all that, of course, is the most fascinating aspect of this thing. apart from the history of the war, but tweeting the blu-ray and HD DVD But yeah, those drives are absolutely fascinating. As I said, they're bound to be a lot simpler. I haven't torn down a modern blu-ray drive, but I don't think this would be that complex I've torn down like older CD players before, for example, like the original one.

I'll have to link it in at the end of this video. the original Sony Walkman that weren't Sony Discman back in the 80s or early 90s was it. And yet that one is hideously complicated compared to, you know, even one like five years later or 10 years later, let alone a modern, just regular CD player drive which is incredibly simple. So they do refine.

The optics and and the mechanics and everything else are these things. so they're not nearly as complicated as this these days. That's where you can get it in much thinner form factors. Not this, so you know five and a quarter inch rubbish and drive form factor that we've got these days.

You can get them, you know is ultra slim ones inside dart notebooks and stuff like that. They'd be much more refined than this, but this was the first one. I'm not sure the blu-ray ones shipped earlier than the HD DVDs did they are not in our to double-check that? But yeah, this is basically the world's first. Um, PC because it's just a regular PC HD DVD Player Awesome! So anyway, I hope you found that video interesting.

If you did, please give it a big thumbs up because that always helps a lot on YouTube And as always, discuss it down below and there will be a couple of retro videos here or related videos here at the end. Catch you next time you.