Digital Versatile Disc

DVD (also known as "Digital Versatile Disc" and "Digital Video Disc") is a popular optical disc storage media format used for data storage. Its main uses are for movies, software, and data archiving. Most DVDs are of the same dimensions as compact discs (CDs) but store more than 6 times the data.The term DVD is used in describing three ways that data is stored on the disks — DVD-ROM has data which can only be read and not written,  DVD-R can be written once and then functions as a DVD-ROM, and DVD-RAM holds data that can be re-written multiple times. DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs respectively refer to properly formatted and structured video and audio content. Everything else, including other types of DVD discs with video content, is referred to as a DVD-Data disc. DVD is also used generically to refer to HD (High Density) video disc formats Blu-ray and HD DVD.
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<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. RCA home. http://www.zdnet.com/products/special/current/dvd.html. http://www.zdnet.com/products/special/current/dvdsum.html.
[Did this happen as predicted? Current state?]
(1999-07-08)