 |
|
December 2008 |
| Home
|
| Using Compact Discs |
| DVD "Digital Video Disc" or "Digital Versatile Disc" is a newer technology than Compact Disc. The discs appear to be the same but DVD is a higher density data storage system capable of over seven times the data capacity of CD. Since DVD also supports double sided discs the storage capacities are as follows -
This represents an enormous increase in the data storage of these devices and this is reflected in the significantly higher price of DVD drives and blank DVD discs. Although rewritable DVD drives are now available for desktop computers they are not as common as rewritable CD drives and both the drives and blank DVDs are considerably more expensive than CD equivalents. There are also two competing standards for rewritable DVDs therefore you cannot be 100% sure that a DVD created on one pc will be compatible with another pc. As with CD, there are several types of DVD available as follows - DVD-R is similar to CD-R and is a write-once medium. DVD-RW is a rewriteable format in which data is written sequentially onto the disc. This is aimed at video recording where the video data is stored as a single continuous "file" on the DVD-RW. DVD+RW is another rewriteable format currently in "competition" with DVD-RW. DVD+RW has the advantage in that it is compatible with DVD video players. DVD-RAM is a high capacity format that allows data to be read, written, and erased in the exactly the same way as a floppy diskette or hard disk.
|
Back