Article - The Arrival of DVD

Host your site on our high performance virtual domain and non-domain accounts.

Let Netpanel design your web site the way you want it.

Submit your web site to 15 major search engines quickly and easily at no charge.

Download some of our free 32-bit software programs for Windows.

Find every news story, article, and special feature ever published on Netpanel.

Take a moment to fill out our quick survey, and earn a free utility in the process.

The arrival of DVD
Published on 6/27/97

Consider DVD as an immensely improved version of CD-ROM. There are many benefits to this new technology. DVD, according to the computer industry, stands for digital versatile disc; while the entertainment industry calls it the digital video disc. In any case, DVD is a revolutionary breakthrough.

Perhaps the most impressive feature of DVD is its storage capacity. A standard DVD holds 7 times as much as a CD does: 4.7 GB! For even more capacity, dual-layered DVDs can be created by using both a transparent layer and an opaque layer. These DVDs hold around 8.5 GB of data, which is slightly lower than twice a normal DVD. For more capacity still, dual-layered (and single-layered) discs can be fused together, making a double-sided DVD. These discs, which store up to 17 GB, would require the user to flip over the disc to access the second side. Just in case you're wondering, it would take 26 CDs to match the storage capacity of a dual-layered and double-sided DVD.

DVD also features faster transfer rates than any CD-ROM drive. On average, DVD drives transfer data at a rate of 4.69 MB per second. At its best, it can reach transfer rates of 10 MB per second. A 16x CD-ROM drive, at full speed, only transfers 2.4 MB of data per second.

The most popular application of DVD is audio and video. A standard DVD will hold 133 minutes of full-screen video, which is more than enough to store a feature-length film. For this reason, DVD players are available that connect to your TV, much like a laser disc player or VCR. DVD uses MPEG-2 video, an improved version of MPEG that supports better compression and enhanced playback quality. DVD video is far more versatile than VHS video. The quality is higher, the disc will never wear out, and you also get nonlinear viewing access. In other words, comparing DVD to VHS is very much like comparing CDs to cassettes.

As far as sound goes, DVD supports Dolby AC-3 audio, an enhanced form of Dolby Surround Sound. Dolby AC-3 provides 5.1 positional audio channels, as well as a subwoofer channel. This high-fidelity audio will be a vast improvement to your current home theater setup, and especially to your computer system. This audio even tops CD-quality sound.

To experience DVD on your computer you will need both the drive, which resembles a standard CD-ROM drive, and an MPEG-2 decoder board. You will not need to worry, however, because DVD drives are fully backwards compatible. This means that any DVD drive will understand the various forms of DVDs, plus audio CDs and CD-ROM discs. The only thing not yet supported are the recordable CD-R discs. Re-writable DVD formats will be arriving in the near future.

The technology that makes DVD possible has been around for a long time. Computer publications have been reporting on it since early this year, but they all reported that it wasn't shipping yet. The delay was caused by the lack of agreement between the hardware companies, the software companies, and the Hollywood film studios on a standard copy protection scheme. Finally, however, the standard has been set, and anti-piracy hardware can be found on both the DVD drive itself, and the decoding board.

Now that it's here, what are you waiting for? DVD is the hottest new technology to enter the computer and entertainment industries. You'll love it.