The very first DVD players and discs were available in November of 1996 in Japan. In the early March of 1997 it penetrated into the United States. By 1998 DVD players were available in Europe and in 2003, DVD sales and rental records were more than that of VHS. However, to operate a DVD player, you need to have a DVD ROM.



DVDs are the popular optical disc storage devices that are formatted. The main function of a DVD is for video and data storage. Mostly DVDs are the same dimension as compact discs, but store more than six times the data than any compact disc.

The DVD ROM is a further classification the DVD. The main function of the DVD ROM is to store data, which can only be stored and not written. The DVD-R can be written once and then functions as a DVD-ROM.

The DVD was originally initialized for Digital Video Disc. However, others objected to that and suggested that DVD should stand for - Digital Versatile Disc. The reason behind this argument was that this name explains the DVDs extensive use even for non-video applications. Toshiba, one of the major electronics good manufacturers, to date still holds on to the interpretation of Digital Versatile Disc. This subject to date has not yet been concluded.. Thus, today the official name of the format is simply DVD, the letters of which officially do not denote anything.

The journey of the DVD began back in the early 1990s. It began with two high-density optical storage standards being developed. The first one was the Multimedia Compact Disc, which backed by two electronics majors in the market- Philips and Sony. The other one was the Super Density Disc, which was supported by other electronic majors in the market - Toshiba, Time-Warner, Matsushita Electric, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC. However, it was IBM's president, Lou Gerstner, who acted as the matchmaker, which led an effort to unite the two camps behind a single standard, anticipating a repeat of the costly format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s.

Once this step was initiated Philips and Sony abandoned their Multimedia Compact Disc format and agreed to adapt the Toshiba's Super Density disc format with two modifications that were both related to the servo tracking technology. The first one was the adoption of a pit geometry that allows push-pull tracking, a proprietary of Philips and Sony technology. The second adaptation was the Philips' EFMplus technology. The advantage of this technology is the flexibility against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints. The summation of the Multimedia Compact disc format and Super Density Disc gave rise to the DVD specification version 1.0 in the year 1995 and was released in September of 1996.

With the release of the DVD in the market, it slowly spread to various parts of the world. By the year 1999, DVDs were available worldwide and broke various sales records.