digital versatile disc

1 definition found

digital versatile disc - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  Digital Versatile Disc
  Digital Video Disc
  DVD
  DVD-R
  DVD-ROM
  
     <storage> (DVD, formerly "Digital Video Disc") An optical
     storage medium with improved capacity and bandwidth compared
     with the Compact Disc.  DVD, like CD, was initally marketed
     for entertainment and later for computer users.  [When was it
     first available?]
  
     A DVD can hold a full-length film with up to 133 minutes of
     high quality video, in MPEG-2 format, and audio.
  
     The first DVD drives for computers were read-only drives
     ("DVD-ROM").  These can store 4.7 GBytes - over seven times
     the storage capacity of CD-ROM.  DVD-ROM drives read existing
     CD-ROMs and music CDs and are compatible with installed
     sound and video boards.  Additionally, the DVD-ROM drive can
     read DVD films and modern computers can decode them in
     software in real-time.
  
     The DVD video standard was announced in November 1995.
     Matshusita did much of the early development but Philips made
     the first DVD player, which appeared in Japan in November
     1996.  In May 2004, Sony released the first dual-layer drive,
     which increased the disc capacity to 8.5 GB.  Double-sided,
     dual-layer discs will eventually increase the capacity to 17
     GB.
  
     Write-once DVD-R ("recordable") drives record a 3.9GB DVD-R
     disc that can be read on a DVD-ROM drive.  Pioneer released
     the first DVD-R drive on 1997-09-29.
  
     By March 1997, Hitachi had released a rewritable DVD-RAM
     drive (by false analogy with random access memory).  DVD-RAM
     drives read and write to a 2.6 GB DVD-RAM disc, read and
     write-once to a 3.9GB DVD-R disc, and read a 4.7 GB or 8.5 GB
     DVD-ROM.  Later, DVD-RAM discs could be read on DVD-R and
     DVD-ROM drives.
  
     Background (http://tacmar.com/dvd_background.htm).  RCA home (http://imagematrix.com/DVD/home.html)
     .
  
     (2006-01-07)