Digital Versatile Disc / Digital Video Disc

DVD Full Form in English, letter by letter

DVD is an optical disc format that stores video, audio and data, holding about 4.7 GB on a single layer against a CD's 700 MB.

DVD Full Form in Indian Languages

The box says DVD, and two expansions are in use. Here are Digital Versatile Disc and Digital Video Disc written in six Indian languages.

Versatile or Video: why the name is disputed

When the format was being developed in the mid-1990s, the pitch was movies on a disc that would replace VHS tapes, so the letters were read as Digital Video Disc. Because the same disc could carry computer data and audio, some of the companies behind it preferred Digital Versatile Disc. Both expansions are in common use today.

The DVD Forum, the industry group behind the format, never settled the matter in a way that everyone follows, and it has been reported that the name officially is just the three letters. Exam keys in India usually give Digital Versatile Disc, and many give Digital Video Disc as the original. If a question allows only one answer, Digital Versatile Disc is the safer pick, and it is the one this page puts first.

Either way the object is the same: a 120 mm plastic disc read by a laser, identical in size to a compact disc but holding far more.

How much a DVD holds, and why

A single-layer, single-sided DVD holds 4.7 GB, about six and a half times the 700 MB of a CD-ROM. A dual-layer disc holds 8.5 GB, and a double-sided single-layer disc holds about 9.4 GB. Most commercial films used dual-layer discs, which is why some players paused briefly in the middle of a movie as they switched layers.

The gain came from physics. A DVD uses a red laser at about 650 nm instead of the CD's 780 nm, and its tracks are packed 0.74 micrometres apart rather than 1.6. A dual-layer disc adds a second semi-reflective data layer, read by refocusing the laser.

Blu-ray, the successor, repeated the trick with a blue-violet laser at 405 nm: 25 GB on a single layer and 50 GB on a dual layer. The 4.7 GB against 25 GB comparison is the one exam papers like to ask.

The kinds of DVD you would have seen

DVD-ROM was the read-only disc for computer software, DVD-Video carried films, and DVD-Audio existed but never caught on. For recording there were DVD-R and DVD+R, write-once formats popular for home video and data backups, and DVD-RW and DVD+RW, which could be erased and reused.

DVD-RAM was a fully rewritable format used in some camcorders and computers. It was durable but less compatible, so most people never met it.

Blank DVDs sold in packs of ten were once the standard way to back up photos and college projects, until pen drives and cloud storage replaced them.

Region coding: why a disc refused to play

Film studios wanted to control release dates and prices in different markets, so every player and every disc carries a region code. There are six main regions. India falls in Region 5, which covers the Indian subcontinent along with Russia, Africa and a few other areas. North America is Region 1 and Europe is Region 2.

A Region 1 disc bought abroad will not play on a locked Region 5 player. Many players in Indian electronics markets were sold region-free, and some computer drives allowed the region to be changed a limited number of times before locking permanently. Discs marked Region 0 or ALL play anywhere.

Blu-ray uses a separate and simpler system of three regions, A, B and C, and India is in Region B.

What replaced the DVD, and what is left

The first DVD players went on sale in Japan in 1996 and reached Indian homes in the late 1990s and 2000s as prices fell. Cheap players and low-priced discs from street stalls brought home video to many families that had never owned a VCR.

Blu-ray arrived in 2006 for high definition and won the format war against Toshiba's HD DVD in early 2008. Streaming then did the rest, and laptops stopped shipping with optical drives.

What survives is mostly old film collections, some car and set-top systems, and general knowledge questions, where the full form is still a favourite.

The job of a DVD as a way to carry files has gone to the USB pen drive, which holds many times more and can be rewritten easily, and to the SSD for fast storage. For films, streaming and HD or 4K downloads give a sharper picture than a DVD can carry, since DVD video is standard definition.

If you still have discs, store them upright in cases, away from heat and sunlight, and hold them by the edge. Home-burned DVDs fade over the years, so copy anything important from them to a drive soon. A light scratch can often be handled by the player's error correction, but a deep one across the tracks usually cannot.

The DVD made VHS look dated by being smaller, sharper and cheaper. If you still own old discs, the region code and the layer type are the two things worth checking before you buy a player.

DVD Full Form: Common Questions