Digital Versatile Disc: Difference between revisions

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Conventional CD players cannot play DVDs, but DVD players ''can'' play CDs. Drives designed to read and write both CDs and DVDs are common and inexpensive; as of early 2009, most new personal computers have DVD writers fitted, and dual writers are generally easier to find than plain DVD-ROM or DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drives. In addition, both the competing DVD-R(W) (developed by the DVD Forum itself as with DVD-ROM) and DVD+R(W) (developed by the DVD+RW Alliance<ref>Not a typo; RW came before R for the + format.</ref>) formats ar generally supported by modern DVD writers.

DVDs are now common installation media and provide reasonable quality video (in comparison to hi-def programming and [[Blu-Ray]]; compare DVD to its forerunner, VHS, and the leap in quality is pretty astonishing). The format is used by the vast majority of [[PlayStation 2]] games, [[Xbox]] games, and [[Xbox 360]] games (the [[~~PlayStation~~ 3]] uses Blu-ray.) It's also a major standard for video players; the first models came out in Japan in 1996, and in North America in 1997, and are still readily available today (sometimes for as little as US$20–30 for a small set-top player). While Blu-ray (which won the high-definition format war by default in 2008) is expected to replace it eventually, DVD's reach has been so great that this will take a while (it helps that, unlike the switch from VHS to DVD, even the cheapest Blu-Ray players can play a standard DVD, due to the similarity in construction), and it may even be curtailed by the advent of online video sales/streaming sites.

DVDs are now common installation media and provide reasonable quality video (in comparison to hi-def programming and [[Blu-Ray]]; compare DVD to its forerunner, VHS, and the leap in quality is pretty astonishing). The format is used by the vast majority of [[PlayStation 2]] games, [[Xbox]] games, and [[Xbox 360]] games (the [[Play Station 3]] uses Blu-ray.) It's also a major standard for video players; the first models came out in Japan in 1996, and in North America in 1997, and are still readily available today (sometimes for as little as US$20–30 for a small set-top player). While Blu-ray (which won the high-definition format war by default in 2008) is expected to replace it eventually, DVD's reach has been so great that this will take a while (it helps that, unlike the switch from VHS to DVD, even the cheapest Blu-Ray players can play a standard DVD, due to the similarity in construction), and it may even be curtailed by the advent of online video sales/streaming sites.

Nintendo's [[Game Cube]] and [[Wii]] optical formats are DVDs that always spin at the same speed from center to rim. This lowers their capacity slightly, and is an attempt to curtail piracy.

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[[Category:How Video Game Specs Work]]

[[Category:Formats]]

[[Category:Digital Versatile Disc]]

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