HD DVD successeur du dvd en 2003 par le DVD Forum

On November 19, 2003, the DVD Forum decided that the HD DVD will be the HDTV successor of the DVD. At this meeting they renamed it to HD DVD, while it had been previously called the "Advanced Optical Disc" (AOD). Blu-ray Disc was developed outside of the DVD Forum, and was never submitted to the forum for consideration.
This is however a not very surprising extension of the previous DVD-R/RW versus DVD+R/RW war, where - (dash) was the format defended by DVD Forum, and + (plus) the format defended by the DVD+RW Alliance.

The DVD Forum generally has focus on CE (Consumer Electronic) and Japanese market development (where CE happens to be very strong).

The DVD+RW Alliance has invested more on the PC market with technologies such as Background Formatting and defect management through "Mount Rainier" (unreleased).

The current specification version for HD DVD-ROM and HD DVD-Rewritable is version 1.0.
The specification for HD DVD-R is currently at 0.9. The first HD DVD-ROM drives were expected to be unveiled by Q4 2004, with mass production to start in Q1 2005. The actual product launch of both CE and PC units occurred in 2006