DVD
Short for digital versatile disc or digital video disc, a new type of CD-ROM that holds a minimum of 4.7GB (gigabytes), enough for a full-length movie. Many experts believe that DVD disks, called DVD-ROMs, will eventually replace CD-ROMs, as well as VHS video cassettes and laser discs. 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. This means that DVD players 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.
Stands for "Digital Versatile Disc." If you hear people refer to DVDs as digital video discs, tell them they used to be right, but now, with the mulitple uses of DVDs, the correct term is "digital versatile disk." Yep, the technology naming people just love to confuse us... A DVD is a high-capacity optical disc that looks like a CD, but can store much more information. While a CD can store 650 MB of data, a single-layer, single-sided DVD can store 4.7GB of data. This allows for massive computer applications and full-length movies to be stored on a single DVD. Even more amazing are the other options available with DVD: There is a two-layer standard that doubles the single-sided capacity to 8.5GB. The disks can also be double-sided, ramping up the maximum storage on a single disc to 17GB. That's 26 times more data than a CD can hold! However, to be able to read DVDs in your computer you'll need a DVD-ROM drive. Fortunately, DVDs can also read your CDs, but to play DVD movies on your computer, you'll need to have a graphics card with a DVD-decoder.
