DVD-Video

DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVD discs, and is currently the dominant consumer video format in Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia. Discs using the DVD-Video specification require a DVD drive and a MPEG-2 decoder (e.g. a DVD player, or a DVD computer drive with a software DVD player). Commercial DVD movies are encoded using a combination of MPEG-2 compressed video and audio of varying formats (often multi-channel formats as described below). Typically, data rate for DVD movies range from 3 Mbit/s to 9.5 Mbit/s, and the bit rate is usually adaptive. It was first available for retail around 1997.

The DVD-Video specification was created by DVD Forum and can be obtained from DVD Format/Logo Licensing Corporation for a fee of $5,000. The specification is not publicly available, because every subscriber must sign a non-disclosure agreement. Certain information in the DVD Book is proprietary and confidential.