DVD, which is once stood for Digital Video Disc and later Digital Versatile Disc, is now just "DVD". It is no longer an acronym that it once was. DVD is today's premiere format for video, audio, and data storage. In this tutorial, we'll explore the physical characteristics of the DVD format and its data capacity, and see what makes it different from the audio Compact Disc (CD) format with which we're all familiar. Once we talk about physical format of DVD, we'll explore the various application formats of DVD: DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, and DVD-ROM.

As a disc, DVD looks very much like the CD. Both are shiny discs that are 4 3/4 inches (12.0 cm) in diameter. Both are optical formats containing digital information. This means a laser pickup is used to read the digital data encoded on the disc. But that's where the similarities end.

DVD is actually a family of physical and application formats. As far as the physical format, DVD can hold anywhere from seven times to over 25 times the digital data on a CD, depending on the the disc's construction. Additionally, the DVD may be used for video, audio, or data storage applications as a DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, or DVD-ROM application format, respectively.