THE SECRET LIFE
OF THE SILVER DISC

After the format-war scare of the early 90s, Sony, Toshiba, Philips, Matsushita and friends settle on a single standard. The DVD Forum is born; 'Digital Video Disc' quietly becomes 'Digital Versatile Disc'.

Players go on sale in Japan in November 1996 at around $700. The US launch follows in March 1997, in just seven test cities, with roughly 30 titles available.

Inside every movie disc: VOB files carrying MPEG-2 video and audio, IFO files holding menus and chapter maps, and BUP backups of the IFOs. A file system fans would come to know by heart.

4.7 GB on a single layer, 8.5 GB dual-layered — a whole film in digital quality on one side of one disc. LaserDisc, which needed a flip mid-movie, never stood a chance.

The Content Scramble System encrypts every commercial DVD. Its 40-bit key length is chosen partly to stay under US crypto export limits — a decision that will age very badly.

The DVD Copy Control Association licenses CSS to manufacturers. Every compliant player and drive pays tolls and signs the agreement not to reveal the keys.

Six regions carve up the planet so studios can stagger theatrical releases. Players sold in one region refuse discs from another — the first thing enthusiasts learn to hate.

DeCSS appears online: code that decrypts CSS, built after 15-year-old Jon Lech Johansen and collaborators reverse-engineer a licensed Windows player. The lock is three years old.

The DVD CCA sues 72 defendants in California, Johansen included, claiming trade-secret theft. In parallel, Norwegian police raid his home under a rarely used computer-crime law.

An Oslo court acquits Johansen: reverse-engineering a product you own is not a crime. The verdict survives appeal in 2004. The civil cases in the US quietly collapse.

Universal v. Corley: a US court bars 2600 magazine from even linking to DeCSS, ruling code can be regulated as conduct. A First Amendment landmark, still debated today.

The real weapon: Section 1201 of the DMCA makes trafficking in circumvention tools illegal regardless of intent. Backup or piracy, the tool itself becomes contraband.

DVD Decrypter, written by the pseudonymous LIGHTNING UK!, becomes the default way to pull a disc's contents to a hard drive. Development ends in 2005 after legal pressure from Macrovision.

Eric Petit starts HandBrake on BeOS as a way to transcode DVDs for offline viewing. It survives everything else from that era and is still the go-to open-source transcoder.

DVD Shrink answers the era's burning question: how to squeeze a 7 GB movie onto a cheap 4.7 GB recordable disc. The re-encode-and-burn pipeline defines a generation of backups.

MakeMKV takes the lossless route — remuxing disc content into a single MKV file with no re-encoding. Two decades on, it is still actively maintained.

Two incompatible high-definition discs launch within weeks of each other. Studios pick sides, retailers hedge, and customers do what customers always do: wait.

Sony prices the PlayStation 3 as the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market. Millions of consoles later, the war is decided in living rooms, not boardrooms.

February 19, 2008: Toshiba abandons HD DVD. The war that everyone feared would last a decade ends in under two years. Blu-ray inherits the shelf space.

Netflix launches 'Watch Now', a free extra for DVD-rental subscribers. The feature that will kill the disc ships as a footnote.

Redbox's dollar kiosks keep physical rental alive at grocery stores and pharmacies long after the video stores die — the disc's longest life support.

Netflix tries to split its DVD and streaming businesses under the name Qwikster. Subscribers revolt, the stock craters, the split is reversed — but the message is received.

US disc sales peak around 2005. By 2016, digital home-entertainment revenue overtakes physical for the first time. The silver disc becomes a collector's item.

Blockbuster files for bankruptcy in 2010, nine years after passing on the chance to buy Netflix for $50 million. One store in Bend, Oregon outlives them all.