I know physical media for computer software and movies/music has dwindled in popularity with the advent of downloads and streaming, but it’s still around. And, despite upgrades in technology and storage capacity, it seems like we’re still going with the 4.7” optical disc.
CDs. DVDs. Blu-ray. Console games. All still use the good ol’ “CD” form factor after almost half a century.
What are the reasons for this? Is it just due to familiarity? Is the manufacturing and distribution infrastructure just too well established and not easy to change? Is there anything on the horizon to replace it? Or is “the disc” really just the end of the line for consumer physical media? Curious.
In: Technology
Its in part the reasons you posted. It’s also just about the perfect size for disk based media. Any larger and its cumbersome. But making it smaller exponentially reduces the surface area you have to write to. A disk half the size of a CD has far less than half the capacity of a CD.
In the past it was mostly about making it a size that would fit in tower-type workstations. Once that size settled in it was mostly a matter of industry wide inertia.
There are many advantages to a unified form factor, production-wise. t allows new disc players to be backward compatible with minimal effort. It allows your factory to reuse many molds and pieces. You can switch production from DVDs to blu-rays to CDs with minimal downtime and hassle.
Backwards compatiblite. A cd/dvd/Blu-ray drive makes more sense if everything is the same shape
The 4.7-inch optical disc form factor, known as the DVD, became a standard due to its compatibility with existing CD technology and players. It struck a balance between storage capacity and size, making it a practical choice for distributing movies and data. This size was widely adopted, and subsequent formats like Blu-ray maintained a similar disc size to ensure backward compatibility with DVD players.
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