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Nearly every movie
produced today is available on DVD, and many older movies are being moved to the
DVD format. Often, a movie comes out on DVD before it comes out on videotape,
because the manufacturing and distribution costs for DVDs are so much lower! By
bringing outstanding picture and sound to our favorite films, the DVD format is
doing for movies exactly what CDs did for music.
The Basics
A
DVD is very similar to a CD, but it has a much larger data capacity. A standard
DVD holds about seven times more data than a CD does. This huge capacity means
that a DVD has enough room to store a full-length, mpeg-2-encoded movie, as well
as a lot of other information.
Here
are the typical contents of a DVD movie:
1). Up to 133 minutes of high-resolution
video, in letterbox or pan-and-scan format, with 720 dots of horizontal resolution
(The video compression ratio is typically 40:1 using MPEG-2 compression.)
2).
Soundtrack presented in up to eight languages using 5.1 channel Dolby digital
surround sound
3). Subtitles in up to 32 languages
DVD can also be used
to store almost eight hours of CD-quality music per side.
DVD
Advantages
1). DVD picture quality is better, and many of DVDs have Dolby
Digital or DTS sound, which is much closer to the sound you experience in a movie
theater.
2). Many DVD movies have an on-screen index, where the creator of
the DVD has labeled many of the significant parts of the movie, sometimes with
a picture. With your remote, if you select the part of the movie you want to view,
the DVD player will take you right to that part, with no need to rewind or fast-forward.
3). DVD players are compatible with audio CDs.
4). Some DVD movies have
both the letterbox format, which fits wide-screen TVs, and the standard TV size
format, so you can choose which way you want to watch the movie.
5). DVD
movies may have several soundtracks on them, and they may provide subtitles in
different languages. Foreign movies may give you the choice between the versions
dubbed into your language, or the original soundtrack with subtitles in your language.
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