DVD: Digital Video Disc, Digital Versatile Disc

Introduction

When computer and storage technology was under development, there was a great demand for high-capacity portable storage devices which can easily help in porting high intensive content such as Operating Systems, HD Quality videos or movies, and large software programmes. It was mainly developed and invented by four companies Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs provide higher capacity storage than CDs (Compact Disk) and can be played in multiple media players such as DVD players.

What is DVD ?

DVD stands for Digital Video Disk or Digital Versatile Disk, it is an optical disk used to store data, especially multimedia. It is a most viable and commercially economical option to store data through read-only, recordable, erasable or rewritable versions.

DVD represents the second version of disk technology which was released and developed by mainly SONY and PHILIPS in 1995.

Data is stored in the DVD in the form of encoded binary data which are stored in a tiny pits track between the innermost and outermost track. DVDs are also available in single and double side versions, where data can be stored on one side as well as on the other side of the double side version disk. A double layer DVD can hold data upto 16 GB which is 10 times more than CD. Even the single-layer DVD can hold data upto 4 GB at least. SiSingle-sideVDs are standard and most commonly used among houses for movies.

Sr#	Type	Storage Capacity
1	Single-sided, single layered	4.7GB
2	Single-sided, double layered	8.5GB
3	Double-sided, single layered	9.4GB
4	Double-sided, double layered	17.08GB

There are mainly two types of DVD: DVD-ROM, DVD-R and DVD-RW.

DVD-ROM

DVD-ROM is only used for reading and no data cannot be altered or re-written. It is mainly used to store operating systems and other machine level software.

DVD-R

DVD-R are recordable discs which can be recorded one time only with the help of a disk recorder. Once it's recorded it cannot be re-write or erased hence functions as a DVD- ROM.

DVD-RW

Re-writable DVDs are DVD-RW or DVD-RAM, which can be recorded and erased as many times as possible.

History of DVD

CD Videos was first released in 1987. However only in 1993 it has become the first format to distribute digitally encoded film. In the same year a new optical disk format was developed by two major groups. One was Multimedia Compact Disk (MMCD) which was developed by Philips and Sony where the other was Super Density (SD) disk supported by Toshiba, Hitachi, Mitibushi, JVC and many others. In 1995, Philips and Sony renamed MMCD and referring their format as Digital Video Disk (DVD).

In 1995, an ad hoc technical working group (TWG) formed by Apple, IBM, Microsoft, HP and Compaq, released a press release which highlighted that they will drop both the formats unless one single format is accepted by DVD and SD.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Following are the advantages of DVDs

• Carries large capacity as compared to its predecessors

• Easy to port and available at almost very multimedia stores

• Higher durability and can be used to store data for longer term

• Relatively cheaper source of storage device

• Comes with a variant of re-writability

• Maintain good quality of multimedia such as sounds, musics and movies

• DVDs are capable to store 4K resolution videos

Following are the dis-advantages of DVDs

• It works only with DVD ROMs and are not readable by CD ROMs

• It is a non-standard storage device

• Data partition is not possible

• It has a built in copy restriction and hence copying data from DVD isn’t that easy

• Data can be stored through another software which can store data on DVD or technically burning it

• DVDs can be easily corrupted by scratches on the magnetic side of it

• DVDs are fragile and need to be handled with care

Application

• It can easily store two hour video that has been digitised into MPEG2 compression format

• With the advent of technology into High Definition videos, and DHD TVs. DVD makers like TOSHIBA, NEC Corporation, Blu-Ray and SONY introduced High Definition DVD technology.

• DVD-R and DVD-ROM is used to store critical Windows applications and OS for PCs and Servers.

• It supports widescreen movies on widescreen or on standard TVs

• Some of the DVD technologies have built in debugging and storage management features available.

Conclusion

Digital Video Disk is an optical disk used to store multimedia data such as Video and Audios. DVDs are known for high capacity media storage whereas one side of disk is capable to store upto 4GB of data. DVD format is the result of efforts put in by companies like Sony, Philips, Toshiba, NEC, Thomson, JVC, etc.

DVD comes with different variants such as DVD-R and DVD-RW. DVDs are also available with single sided storage and double sided storages. In order to read the information stored in DVD, it requires a player which reads the information stored in a form of tinley racks in the form of binary bits.

With the advent of latest technologies and trends of online availability of multimedia content on platforms such as Netflix, Hotstar and Prime Videos. More and more people are moving away from purchasing DVDs as it requires initial capital investment such as DVD players.

FAQs

Q1. Can a DVD drive read CDs?

Ans: Yes, all DVD drivers can read CDs. Also, DVD Burns can also write DVD-R, DVD-RW, CD- R.

Q2. Is DVD an input or storage?

Ans: All devices such as DVDs, CDs, Floppy Disk, Pen Drives are storage devices.

Q3. When was DVD first used?

Ans: DVDs were first used in Nov 1996 in Japan and March 1997 in the United States.