12 Facts About DVD

1.

DVD is a digital optical disc data storage format.

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2.

Oxford English Dictionary comments that, "In 1995, rival manufacturers of the product initially named digital video disc agreed that, in order to emphasize the flexibility of the format for multimedia applications, the preferred abbreviation DVD would be understood to denote digital versatile disc.

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3.

Consumers, DVD soon replaced VHS as the favored choice for home movie releases.

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4.

DVD discs are made up of two discs; normally one is blank, and the other contains data.

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5.

Borrowing from the LaserDisc format, the DVD standard includes DVD-10 discs with two recorded data layers such that only one layer is accessible from either side of the disc.

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6.

Later in the format's life, larger data buffers and faster optical pickups in DVD players made layer transitions effectively invisible regardless of mastering.

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7.

DVD recordables are now used for consumer audio and video recording.

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8.

Recordable DVD discs supporting dual-layer technology are backward-compatible with some hardware developed before the recordable medium.

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9.

DVD drives are devices that can read DVD discs on a computer.

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10.

DVD-Video became the dominant form of home video distribution in Japan when it first went on sale on November 1, 1996, but it shared the market for home video distribution in the United States for several years; it was June 15, 2003, when weekly DVD-Video in the United States rentals began outnumbering weekly VHS cassette rentals.

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11.

DVD-Video is still the dominant form of home video distribution worldwide except for in Japan where it was surpassed by Blu-ray Disc when Blu-ray first went on sale in Japan on March 31, 2006.

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12.

In fact, experts claim that the DVD will remain the dominant medium for at least another five years as Blu-ray technology is still in its introductory phase, write and read speeds being poor and necessary hardware being expensive and not readily available.

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