also known as "
Digital Versatile Disc" or "
Digital Video Disc") is an
optical disc storage media format that can be used for
data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. DVDs resemble
Compact Discs in that they have the exact same appearance (eg, the diameter is the same - 120 mm or 4.72 inches, or occasionally 80 mm
or 3.15 inches) and they are both optical storage media with such similarity that a dvd reader or writer can usually also
handle cd's. But DVDs are
encoded in a different format and at a much higher density, giving DVDs a capacity that is 8 times higher (single layer, single sided).
All read-only DVD discs, regardless of type, are DVD-ROM discs. This includes replicated (factory pressed), recorded
(burned), video, audio, and data DVDs. A DVD with properly formatted and structured video content is a DVD-Video disc. DVDs with properly formatted and structured audio are DVD-Audio discs. Everything else (including other types of DVD discs with video) is referred to as a DVD-Data disc. Many
people use the term "DVD-ROM" to refer to pressed data discs only, but that is not technically correct.
