Full description not available yet.
  
  Subset of DVD specs, even though normally term "DVD" refers to this particular format.
  
  DVD-Video is a standard developed by DVD Forum and specifies how video should be stored on optical DVD disc. DVD-Video specs allow two different kind of video encoding algorithms to be used: MPEG-2 and MPEG-1. Virtually all DVD-Video discs use MPEG-2 format, mostly because of its superiority over MPEG-1 in terms of video quality.
  
  Resolutions that video streams can use, are:
  
  720x480 (NTSC, only with MPEG-2)
  720x576 (PAL, only with MPEG-2)
  704x480 (NTSC, only with MPEG-2)
  704x576 (PAL, only with MPEG-2)
  352x480 (NTSC, MPEG-2 & MPEG-1)
  352x576 (PAL, MPEG-2 & MPEG-1)
  352x240 (NTSC, MPEG-2 & MPEG-1)
  352x288 (PAL, MPEG-2 & MPEG-1)

  Full description not available yet.
  
  A DVD Forum (the industry body that controls the development of DVD formats) approved re-writable DVD format. Format allows single-layer data to be stored on each side of the disc -- in other words, one side of the disc can hold upto 4.38 gigabytes of information (NOT 4.7GB what the disc labels claim -- 4.7GB is achieved by tweaking the numbers and using 1,000 in calculations between megabyte and gigabyte, when the correct number to be used should be 1,024). Dual-layer discs that could hold 8.5GB don't exist and most likely never will due technical limitations. This poses a problem when backing up pressed DVD-Video discs that can hold dual-layer worth of data per side, 8.5GB. Those discs need to be split to two DVD-RW discs if all the information has to be preserved from the original disc.
  
  DVD-RW is technically slightly less advanced than its competitor, DVD+RW. But the year 2002's projections of blank media sales show that sales of DVD-RW media will dominate the markets with appx. 75 percent re-writable market share.
  
  Both, DVD-RW and DVD+RW, formats are re-writable formats. DVD-RW's "sister format" is called DVD-RW which is essentially a record-once version of DVD-R. DVD+RW's sister format is called DVD+R.
  
  DVD-RW discs can be read with virtually any PC DVD-ROM drive and with most of the regular, stand-alone DVD players.

  Full description not available yet.
  
  A proprietary re-writable DVD format, developed by DVD+RW Alliance. Format allows single-layer data to be stored on each side of the disc -- in other words, one side of the disc can hold upto 4.38 gigabytes of information (NOT 4.7GB what the disc labels claim -- 4.7GB is achieved by tweaking the numbers and using 1,000 in calculations between megabyte and gigabyte, when the correct number to be used should be 1,024). Dual-layer discs that could hold 8.5GB don't exist and most likely never will due technical limitations. This poses a problem when backing up pressed DVD-Video discs that can hold dual-layer worth of data per side, 8.5GB. Those discs need to be split to two DVD+RW discs if all the information has to be preserved from the original disc.
  
  DVD+RW is technically slightly more advanced than its competitor, DVD-RW. But the year 2002's projections of blank media sales show that sales of DVD-RW dominate the rewritable market by ratio of 75-to-25 when compared to DVD+RW.
  
  Both, DVD+RW and DVD-RW, formats are re-writable formats. DVD+RW's "sister format" is called DVD+R which is essentially a record-only-once version of DVD+R. DVD-RW's sister format is called DVD-R.

  Full description not available yet.
  
  A DVD Forum (the industry body that controls the development of DVD formats) approved recordable DVD format. Format allows single-layer data to be stored on each side of the disc -- in other words, one side of the disc can hold upto 4.38 gigabytes of information (NOT 4.7GB what the disc labels claim -- 4.7GB is achieved by tweaking the numbers and using 1,000 in calculations between megabyte and gigabyte, when the correct number to be used should be 1,024). Dual-layer discs that could hold 8.5GB don't exist and most likely never will due technical limitations. This poses a problem when backing up pressed DVD-Video discs that can hold dual-layer worth of data per side, 8.5GB. Those discs need to be split to two DVD-R discs if all the information has to be preserved from the original disc.
  
  DVD-R is technically slightly less advanced than its competitor, DVD+R. But the year 2002's projections of blank media sales show that sales of DVD-R media will exceed 90,000,000 discs during 2002 while sales of DVD+R media will be only 13,000,000.
  
  Both, DVD-R and DVD+R, formats are write-once formats. DVD-R's "sister format" is called DVD-RW which is essentially a re-writable version of DVD-R. DVD+R's sister format is called DVD+RW.
  
  DVD-R discs can be read with virtually any PC DVD-ROM drive and with most of the regular, stand-alone DVD players.

  Full description not available yet.
  
  A propietary recordable DVD format, developed by DVD+RW Alliance. Format allows single-layer data to be stored on each side of the disc -- in other words, one side of the disc can hold upto 4.38 gigabytes of information (NOT 4.7GB what the disc labels claim -- 4.7GB is achieved by tweaking the numbers and using 1,000 in calculations between megabyte and gigabyte, when the correct number to be used should be 1,024). Dual-layer discs that could hold 8.5GB don't exist and most likely never will due technical limitations. This poses a problem when backing up pressed DVD-Video discs that can hold dual-layer worth of data per side, 8.5GB. Those discs need to be split to two DVD+R discs if all the information has to be preserved from the original disc.
  
  DVD+R is technically slightly more advanced than its competitor, DVD-R. But the year 2002's projections of blank media sales show that sales of DVD-R media will exceed 90,000,000 discs during 2002 while sales of DVD+R media will be only 13,000,000.
  
  Both, DVD+R and DVD-R, formats are write-once formats. DVD+R's "sister format" is called DVD+RW which is essentially a re-writable version of DVD+R. DVD-R's sister format is called DVD-RW.

  Full description not available yet.
  
  SVHS stands for SuperVHS and was developed by JVC to offer better video quality than the VHS format.
  
  SVHS can offer over 400 lines of horizontal resolution compared to appx. 250 lines of VHS (and compared to appx. 500 horizontal lines of regular TV broadcast).
  
  SVHS uses identical-looking cassettes to those of VHS, but you can recognize the SVHS cassettes by a small hole in the cassette container that VHS cassettes don't have. Basically it is possible to simply punch a hole to VHS cassette to record SVHS material to it, but because VHS cassettes were developed for VHS VCRs, they normally only have enough particles on the tape to hold max 250 lines of horizontal resolution, thus making the SVHS recording onto them useless.
  
  SVHS and VHS use the same colour modulation frequencies and bandwidths, so colour information is always correct. This is an interesting fact, because it means that SVHS does not improve on the colour resolution of VHS, except to reduce possible interference between chrominance in luminance. It should be noted however, while colour information is preserved, chrominance alone cannot generate a useful picture.
  
  Despite this, SVHS recording can't be played back correctly with VHS videos, unless VHS VCR has something called "super quality playback" that allows playing SVHS tapes, but not recording onto them

  Codec stands for Coder/Decoder. Basically it is a piece of software or a driver that adds a support for certain video/audio format for your operating system. With codec, your system recognizes the format the codec is built for and allows you to play the audio/video file (=decode) or in some cases, to change another audio/video file into that format (=(en)code).
  
  For example, when you install Windows to your home computer, Windows installs automatically bunch of most commonly used codec into the system, so you don't have to download them separately from their vendors. Despite that, there are some codecs that are widely used, but not installed automatically by Windows -- most notably DivX ;-), MPEG-2 and in some cases (old Windows versions, like Win95) MPEG-1 codecs.

  AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave. This is a container video format that specifies certain structure how the audio and video streams should be stored within the file. AVI itself doesn't specify how it should be encoded (just like the streaming format ASF), so the audio/video can be stored in very various ways. Most commonly used video codecs that use AVI structure are M-JPEG and DivX ;-). AVI contains code called FourCC which tells what codec it is encoded with.

  Audio and video compression format developed by MPEG group back in 1993. Official description: Coding of moving pictures and associated audio for digital storage media at up to about 1,5 Mbit/s.
  
  MPEG-1 is the video format that has had some extremely popular spin-offs and sideproducts, most notably MP3 and VideoCD.
  
  MPEG-1's compression method is based on re-using the existing framematerial and using psychological and physical limitations of human senses. MPEG-1 video compression method tries to use previous frame's information in order to reduce the amount of information the current frame requires. Also, the audio encoding uses something that's called psychoacoustics -- basically compression removes the high and low frequencies a normal human ear cannot hear.

  MP3 stands for MPEG-1 Audio Layer III. It is not a separate format, but a part of MPEG-1 video encoding format, developed by MPEG group in early 1990's. Too often people refer MP3 as MPEG-3, which is incorrect, because such format doesn't even exist.
  
  MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (MP3) is a method to store good quality audio into small files by using psychoacoustics in order to get rid of the data from the audio that most of the humans can't hear.
  
  MP3's bitrates vary from 8kbps (that is 8 kilobits per second, not kilobytes) to 320kbps. When MP3 phenomenom began in 1996, most of the audio files were encoded using 128kbps bitrate, which is still the most popular bitrate in the world -- although most of the people agree that by using slightly higher bitrates, like 192kbps or 256kbps, the audio quality can be compared with the CD quality.