DVD Extras: A bit of background
Someone asked on Twitter a while ago if anyone knew the history of DVD extras. Since my brain is a giant seething mosh pit of this sort of thing, I told him I'd try to get around to posting some sort of datadump on the topic soon. Here be. DVD extras are not actually unique to DVD. So far as I know, they began to appear on laserdiscs, partly as an incentive to purchase the disc-based copy of the movie rather than the VHS tape, and partly as a way to show off. Videocassettes are an entirely linear format. From any given point, your only choice is to access the next point along the tape, either backwards or forwards -- all the REW and FF buttons do is access the linear sequence of tape segments veryveryfast , which is why a lot of VCRs can and will give you some sort of (possibly torn and garbled) picture when you do it while the tape is running. Film, the very first home video format, works similarly; the only way to get to a specific frame is to wind the film onto and off of sp...