Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) and Streamers

[SmithMoons]

DVD (digital versatile disc) is an optical disc technology that is expected to rapidly replace the CD-ROM disc (as well as the audio compact disc) over the next few years. The digital versatile disc (DVD) holds 4.7 gigabyte of information on one of its two sides, or enough for a 133-minute movie.

With two layers on each of its two sides, it will hold up to 17 gigabytes of video, audio, or other information. (Compare this to the current CD-ROM disc of the same physical size, holding 600 megabyte. The DVD can hold more than 28 times as much information!)

DVD-Video is the usual name for the DVD format designed for full-length movies and is a box that will work with your television set. DVD-ROM is the name of the player that will (sooner or later) replace Custom Web Design computer's CD-ROM. It will play regular CD-ROM discs as well as DVD-ROM discs. DVD-RAM is the writeable version. DVD-Audio is a player designed to replace your compact disc player.

DVD uses the MPEG-2 file and compression standard. MPEG-2 images have four times the resolution of MPEG-1 images and can be delivered at 60 interlaced fields per second where two fields constitute one image frame. (MPEG-1 can deliver 30 non-interlaced frames per second.) Audio quality on DVD is comparable to that of current audio compact discs.

Streamers have always been considered very special hardware. The first desktop models were attached to either the floppy controller or to a SCSI controller. With the increase of hard drive capacities and the incredible success of the CD, most home users cannot even remember the existence of the good old backup-hardware called streamer.

Streamers do not have the flexibility and portability advantages mentioned above. The tape is usually written sequentially, which makes it more time-consuming to access files, since you would have to manually forward the tape to the location on the desired data. However, this inconvenience is normally not an issue with streamers, because they are typically used to backup and transfer large quantities of data in their entirety, not individual parts of data. Generally, streamer tapes have a large storage capacity, so that huge backups can run unattended, which is a definite advantage over CD-Rs as a backup medium. For example, if you had to backup 3 GB of data onto CD-Rs, you would have to change the CD five times.

[hj3!]

Interesting post... I guess I don't understand why it was posted though. Seems more like a blog post than something meant for a forum. Unless someone had asked what does DVD stand for or something.