Digital Versatile Disc

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 provide over seven times the storage

capacity of CD-ROM (4.7 GBytes). 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 using an advanced (MPEG-2) video board,

required to decode the high resolution video format.

The first drives, using a single-layer disc of 4.7GB, were

expected to be available during the second half of 1996 from

Toshiba, Philips, Sony, Hitachi and others. In 1997,

dual-layer discs were expected to increase 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. The first DVD-R

drive was expected by mid 1997.

By the end of 1997, the rewritable DVD-RAM (by false analogy

with random access memory) drive was expected to become

available. 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. Also, it was expected that a

DVD-RAM disc would be readable on both the DVD-R and DVD-ROM

drives.

Background . RCAhome .

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[Did this happen as predicted? Current state?]

(1999-07-08)