DVD

DVD, meaning digital versatile disc, (PROSE: The Time Travellers' Almanac) was a digital-based physical visual media format used on Earth in the late 20th century and early 21st century.

Originally developed in the 1990s, DVDs quickly replaced video cassettes as the predominant medium for domestic film and TV viewing and recording. For some years, computer games had frequently contained hidden extra features, which the player would have to search for using clues in the game menus, and the DVD format followed this lead. These hidden extras became known as Easter Eggs. (PROSE: The Time Travellers' Almanac)

In 2001, the Fifth Doctor, Martin Ashcroft, Sir Jack Merrivale and Johanna Bourke recorded a commentary for the 25th anniversary DVD release of the 1976 portmanteau film Doctor Demonic's Tales of Terror. (AUDIO: Special Features)

Billy Shipton, acting on instructions from the Tenth Doctor decades earlier, entered into the DVD authoring business after plying his trade in video publishing. In the 2000s, he arranged secretly to have a specially encoded Easter egg file added to each of seventeen commercially released DVDs.

The file, when opened by viewers, played a one-sided video message from the Doctor recorded in 1969 intended for Sally Sparrow. The message was noticed by Larry Nightingale (who worked in a DVD rental shop) and other Internet forum users before finally being seen by Sally herself in the midst of her encounter with the Weeping Angels in the 2000s. Sally eventually realised that the seventeen DVDs containing the Easter egg consisted of her complete collection at that time. The Easter egg file served an additional purpose: it transformed each encoded DVD into a special control disc good for a single one-way journey in the Doctor's TARDIS. When inserted into a DVD drive mounted to the control console, it activated the TARDIS and sent it back to 1969 to be retrieved by the Doctor. (TV: Blink)

The Twelfth Doctor still had this kind of DVD in the TARDIS at the time of his travels with Clara Oswald, one of which was used by Courtney Woods in 2049 to return to Minera Luna San Pedro. (TV: Kill the Moon)

After Emma-Louise Cowell and Diane Holmes were accidentally sent through the Cardiff Rift from 1953 to 2007, they were both astonished that films were sold in boxes, namely DVDs, and people could watch them at home. (TV: Out of Time)

In 2009, Banana Boat was arrested in Lanzarote for selling dodgy DVDs. (TV: A Day in the Death) Ianto had to lie to the Spanish police to get him released. (PROSE: Pack Animals)

Simon owned a copy of Vince Cosmos's performance at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973. (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme)

The Eleventh Doctor kept DVDs in his TARDIS. Amy Pond's mobile phone was by the collection when they visited Apalapucia. (TV: The Girl Who Waited)

Forbidden Planet sold DVDs. (PROSE: In Search of Doctor X)