DVD drives are relatively new devices and they are just beginning to be incorporated into computers! DVD stands for Digital Video Discs. First, before we get started, it is important to note the two different formats of DVDs. First, there are the physical formats, like the DVD-ROM. The DVD-ROM is a format that actually stores and holds data. Second, there are the application formats, such as the DVD-Video. The DVD-Video, commonly referred to as just a DVD, are the videos that are stored on a disc and then played by using a DVD drive built into a special DVD player or built into the computer.
DVD-Videos can be thought of as compact discs that can play movies with the same quality as those shown at the showcase cinemas and movie theaters! The movies are played with extra sharp images, great sounds, and realistic pictures! To recreate the atmosphere in movie theaters, DVD players can be played on a 16 X9 screen. This widescreen effect can be found in almost all showcase cinemas!
Most new computers now have built-in DVD drives! These drives can play the high-quality movies of the DVD-Video! Now, you can watch movies with awesome effects and great sounds from your own computer!
DVD-ROM
DVD-ROMs are very similar to CD-ROMs. They can store large amounts of data, except they are much faster than CDs! The fastest DVD-ROMs can supply information to the computer more than 4 times faster than the fastest CD-ROMs!
How DVD Players Work:
You might be wondering how in the world can we fit all of the thousands of pictures that make up a movie onto a small CD. Well, it's quite simple. The reason that DVDs can work like they do is because they are digital. This basically means DVDs store the information they contain by using the binary system of ones and zeros. The data is in the form of separate steps, rather than one long continuous stream of information.
For example, if you were to digitalize a picture, you would break it up into tiny pieces. Each of the teeny tiny pieces of the picture will have one overall color. To remember all he colors, you would assign each color a number (i.e. red = 1, blue = 2, yellow = 3, green = 4, etc.), and then keep track of the corresponding numbers to the overall colors of the tiny pieces of the picture. Then, to recreate the picture, you would just paint by number!
Sometimes, all the numbers that you would
have to write down to know what colors the picture was might take up more
space than the painting itself. To fix this problem, there is MPEG 2. MPEG
2 is a way to compress all the numbers you have so that the file is a much
smaller size. In MPEG 2, if you have a row of colors that are all the same
in the picture, then all you would do is write down the number assigned to
that color once, followed by dots for each time that color is repeated! This
would save a lot of space!
1995-2001, ThinkQuest Inc.all rights reserved
