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CD/Optical

The world of optical drives - wherein lasers read pits on a spinning disks as data is a virtual alphabet soup of standards and prducts based on them. Here's a list of the latest and classic ideas in optical:

CD

This term is loosely applied when describing a variety of formats, from the production (mass produced) audio and data disks, to the rewritable versions, write once (CD-R) or write many "re-writable" CDs (CD-RW). The standard CD disk can hold about 650MB of data on a single disk.

CD-R: Recordable

This CD-ROM technology allows you to use write-once CD-ROM media to record music, data, or "hybrid" on a special CD-ROM disk that can be read in most CD-ROM drives as long as the disk format is compatible.

CD-RW:  ReWritable" or "Read/Write

This CD-ROM technology allows you to record multiple times to the same CD-ROM disk media. It allows you to erase previous information that was recorded to the CD-ROM media, and record new music, data, or a combination of both to the CD-ROM disk. A limitation of this media is that it can only be read in other CD-RW drives or CD-ROM drives that are "multi-read" compatible. Many older CD-ROM drives will not be able to read this media.

DVD

Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc. A high-density optical storage 6-inch disc capable of storing 4.7, 8.5, 9.4 or 17 gigabytes of data. DVD uses MPEG-2 video compression and Dolby Digital, or DTS audio. Capacities are as follows:

• DVD-5
  Single-sided/single-layer DVD with 4.7 GB storage capability.

• DVD-9
  Single-sided/dual-layer DVD with 8.5 GB storage capability.

• DVD-10
  Double-sided/single-layer DVD with 9.4 GB storage capability.

• DVD-18
  Double-sided/dual-layer DVD with 17 GB storage capability.

• DVD-Audio
  Format of recording 16, 20 or 24 bit digital audio with a sample rate 44.1 - 192 kHz on DVD disc. DVD-Audio disc can also contain video, pictures or text.

DVD-R

Write-once type DVD-Recordable discs invented by Pioneer in 1998. This technology is used for master-disks recording.

DVD-RAM

DVD-Random Access Memory. Rewriteable type DVD disc with more than 2.6 GB or 4.7 GB (DVD-RAM Version 2) storage capacity per side supported by Panasonic, Hitachi and Toshiba. The main disadvantage of the technology - lack of backward compatibility, i.e. DVD-ROM drives and DVD players cannot read from DVD-RAM media.

DVD-ROM

DVD Read Only Memory. DVD-ROM is a version of DVD for computers, designed to replace the CD-ROM. It has the same capacity as DVD-Video that is far greater than normal CD-ROMs. To play DVD movies on a DVD-ROM drive you also need an MPEG-2 decoder board or software decoder.

DVD-ROM Features
DVD discs can be played on DVD-Video equipped personal computers. A new trend in the DVD world is to add computer-specific features to DVD-Video discs, that can only be played through DVD-ROM drives (PC Friendly Disks). These features can be screenplays, links to web sites (often called "web links"), advanced interactive games and text based information. These features are not accessible via DVD-Video players; one must have a DVD-ROM drive or DVD device with DVD-ROM capability.

DVD-RW

DVD-ReWritable. This format was developed by Pioneer and is partially compatible with modern DVD players and DVD-ROM drives. Can be used only for recording audio and video streams.

DVD+RW

Digital Versatile Disc plus Re-Writeable. This format is fully backward compatible with DVD players and DVD-ROM drives and can be used both for video recording and for data storage. Hewlett-Packard, Mitsubishi-Chemical/Verbatim, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, Yamaha and Thomson Multimedia support it. DVD+RW is still in development stage.
 

We feature optical drives from these quality vendors and many more.

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