DVD

A ’Digital Versatile Disc’ or ’Digital Video Disc’ is a kind of an optical disc storage medium for storing video, audio and/or computer data. More commonly known as ’DVD’, it resembles a compact disc, although its diameter can be 120 mm (4.72 inches) or rarely 80 mm (3.15 inches). Popularly used for storing movies with high quality video and sound, the DVD rental is good for watching movies without going to the cinema hall.

There are four basic types of DVDs, each named according to the approximate amount of data storage capacity in gigabytes (GB). These types are: single-sided, single- layered (DVD-5); single-sided, dual-layered (DVD-9); double-sided, single- layered (DVD-10) and double-sided, dual-layered (DVD-18). The DVD-14 has a capacity of 12.3 GB, with one side containing a single layer of data and the other side containing two layers of data. A standard compact disc can hold only around 650 MB of data. On the other hand, a standard single-sided, single-layered DVD can store up to 4.7 GB of data , which is almost the length of a 2-hour long movie, seven times greater than the capacity of a compact disc (1.e. 650 MB).

DVDs are also available in a variety of formats, each with its own set of advantages to suit customer needs. While DVD-ROM is used for computer storage, DVD-R is a one-time recordable device that needs a special drive and media. Other formats like DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD-R/RW can be written multiple times. Most DVD recorders support the rewriteable formats.