How DVDs Work

DVD players are remarkable high-volume storage devices designed for the efficient delivery of data, music and movies. The development of these devices has allowed people to expand their movie collections and experience high-quality entertainment at home. However, their complex technological structure is difficult for the layman to understand, so here is a brief explanation of how DVD's work.

The DVD disk

DVD disks are optimized to store large amounts of multimedia data. Standard DVD's not only store entire movies, but also support multiple languages and a variety of subtitle options, all delivered in high-quality images. The primary difference separating DVDs from standard CDs is the ability to encode multiple layers of data on a single DVD disc, allowing for a higher capacity for storage. The standard CD utilizes only one layer of data.

Video Data compression

In its raw form, the digital information from any movie is far too large to store on any type of disc; therefore, a compression mechanism is needed to take large amounts of data and reduce the size for optimal disc storage and playback. A compression technology known as MPEG-2 is used by DVD production companies to store TV shows and movies onto a single disc. The DVD player in your home is built with an on-board MPEG-2 encoder to decompress the DVD data and broadcast it to your TV.

Audio storage

One substantial advantage of the DVD is its ability to store high-quality audio in a minimum of space. When utilized for sound only, a single DVD is capable of storing over 8 hours of audio in uncompressed format, and thousands of hours when this data is compressed. The audio quality of sound on a standard DVD is vibrant and robust, with multi-layer and multi-channel support permitting storage and delivery of Surround Sound.

DVD discs and players work together to deliver unbeatable video and audio data all contained within a single disc.