DVD, also known as Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc, is an optical disc storage media format, and was invented and developed by Philips, Sony, TOSHIBA, and Time Warner in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage. blank DVD s are of the same dimensions as compact discs (blank CD s), but store more than six times as much data.
Variations of the term DVD often indicate the way data is stored on the discs: DVD-ROM (read only memory) has data that can only be read and not written; DVD-R and DVD+R (recordable) can record data only once, and then function as a DVD-ROM; DVD-RW (re-writable), DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM (random access memory) can all record and erase data multiple times. The wavelength used by standard DVD lasers is 650 nm; thus, the light has a red color.
DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs refer to properly formatted and structured video and audio content, respectively. Other types of DVDs, including those with video content, may be referred to as DVD Data discs.
The official DVD specification documents have never defined the initialism DVD. Usage in the present day varies, with Digital Versatile Disc, Digital Video Disc, and DVD being the most common. DVD was originally used as an initialism for the unofficial term digital videodisk. It was reported in 1995, at the time of the specification finalization, that the letters officially stood for Digital Versatile Disc (due to nonvideo applications).
A newsgroup FAQ written by Jim Taylor (a prominent figure in the industry) claims that four years later, in 1999, the DVD Forum stated that the format name was simply the three letters “DVD” and did not stand for anything.
The DVD Forum website has a section called “DVD Primer” in which the answer to the question, “What does DVD mean?” reads, “The keyword is ‘versatile.’ Digital Versatile Discs provide superb video, audio and data storage and access—all on one disc.”