Click here

DVD

Short for digital versatile disc or digital video disc, a type of optical disk technology similar to the CD-ROM. A DVD holds a minimum of 4.7GB of data, enough for a full-length movie. DVDs are commonly used as a medium for digital representation of movies and other multimedia presentations that combine sound with graphics.

The DVD specification supports disks with capacities of from 4.7GB to 17GB and access rates of 600KBps to 1.3 MBps. One of the best features of DVD drives is that they are backward-compatible with CD-ROMs, meaning they can play old CD-ROMs, CD-I disks, and video CDs, as well as new DVD-ROMs. Newer DVD players can also read CD-R disks.

DVD uses MPEG-2 to compress video data.

For comparison and contrast, see DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM.

Also see DVD Formats Explained in the Did You Know . . . ? section of Webopedia.



Top Terms

Connect with Webopedia

  • What is 250 GB Data Usage?

    What is 250 GB (250 gigabytes) and why is this phrase so popular? Webopedia explains what the phrase 250 GB means in reference to data storage...

    Read More »

Did You Know? Archive »

  • Quick Reference Archive »