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The seeds for DVD were planted in 1986 when Warner Home Video, under the direction of president Warren Lieberfarb, first advocated the development of a format to put movies on a five-inch optical disc, similar to the CD that had taken the music industry by storm just a few years earlier.
As the years progressed, Lieberfarb's drive to develop a video disc for the distribution of movies began to intensify. After more than a decade of steady, and significant, growth, the home video industry - centered on the rental VHS videocassette - had begun to flatten with maturity. The novelty of renting movies was fast wearing off.
Lieberfarb envisioned a whole new model, with video discs riding the coattails of the CD explosion and turning consumers from renters into buyers, with much higher profit margins for the studios. He charged his organization with achieving this vision in an attractive, convenient, collectible form that - unlike the high-cost, cumbersome existing laserdisc system - could be easily and inexpensively replicated.
The DVD project - code-named TAZ after Warner's whirling Tasmanian Devil cartoon character - plunged Warner Home Video into a new world of advanced technology. Lieberfarb and his team, working closely with Toshiba Corp., soon became conversant with such complex issues as thin-disc physics, digital element preparation, authoring and related manufacturing issues.
Beyond developing these new technological skills, Warner Home Video had to negotiate the specifications of the DVD system with the very different corporate cultures of the CE and IT industries, as well as the unique business cultures of its Asian and European partners. Within the Warner Home Video organization, a "Manhattan Project" spirit developed, as more members of management were brought in to apply their special expertise to TAZ - encouraged by the new format's potential.
Then, in 1992, Sony and Philips announced their own intent to develop a high-capacity CD.
Development work at Warner accelerated. The Warner-Toshiba consortium in June 1994 officially announced the development of a five-inch Super Density (SD) disc, which could hold an entire movie.
Three months later, in September, Sony and Philips announced their own specifications for a high-capacity CD, called the Multimedia Compact Disc (MMCD).
Fears of a format war bubbled through the industry as 1994 turned into 1995....