Like a CD drive, a DVD drive uses a laser to read digitized (binary) data that h

ave been encoded onto the disc in the form of tiny pits tracing a spiral track b
etween the centre of the disk and its outer edge. However, because the DVD laser
emits red light at shorter wavelengths than the red light of the CD laser (635
or 650 nanometres for the DVD as opposed to 780 nanometres for the CD), it is ab
le to resolve shorter pits on more narrowly spaced tracks, thereby allowing for
greater storage density. In addition, DVDs are available in single- and double-s
ided versions, with one or two layers of information per side. A double-sided, d
ual-layer DVD can hold more than 16 gigabytes of data, more than 10 times the ca
pacity of a CD-ROM, but even a single-sided, single-layer DVD can hold more than
four gigabytes more than enough capacity for a two-hour movie that has been digit
ized in the highly efficient MPEG-2 compression format. Indeed, soon after the f
irst DVD players were introduced, single-sided DVDs became the standard media fo
r watching movies at home, almost completely replacing videotape. Consumers quic
kly appreciated the convenience of the discs as well as the higher quality of th
e video images, the interactivity of the digital controls, and the presence of n
umerous extra features packed into the discs capacious storage.
The next generation beyond DVD technology is high-definition, or HD, technology.
As television systems switched over to digital signaling, high-definition telev
ision (HDTV) became available, featuring much greater picture resolution than tr
aditional television. Motion pictures are especially suited for display on wide
flat-panel HDTV screens, and in 2002, as in 1994 95, two competing (and incompatib
le) technologies were presented for storing video in high-definition on a CD-ROM
-sized disc: HD DVD, proposed by Toshiba and the NEC Corporation, and Blu-ray, p
roposed by a group led by Sony. Both technologies employed a laser emitting ligh
t in the blue-violet end of the visible spectrum. The extremely short wavelength
of this light (405 nanometres) allowed yet smaller pits to be traced on even mo
re closely spaced tracks than on the DVD. As a result, a single-sided. single-la
yer disc had a storage capacity of 15 gigabytes (HD DVD) or 25 gigabytes (Blu-ra
y).
CD-ROM

Dvd

BluRay-D

VD
sector sizes

445,500

transfer rates up to 10.5 MiB/s

capacities

900 MB

4,173,824
33.24
7GB

72MB/s
50GB

DVD, in full digital video disc or digital versatile disc, type of optical disc
used for data storage and as a platform for multimedia. Its most prominent comm
ercial application is for playing back recorded motion pictures and television p
rograms (hence the designation digital video disc ), though read-only, recordable,
and even erasable and rewritable versions can be used on personal computers to s
tore large quantities of almost any kind of data (hence digital versatile disc ).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The DVD represents the second generation of compact disc (CD) technology.