History (1997): DVD-ROM
From 4.7GB (single-sided, single-layer) to 17GB (double-sided, dual-layer)
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on December 25, 2018 at 2:22 pmThis article was published by the Museum of Obsolete Media.
DVD-ROM (1997-)
DVD-ROM (Digital Versatile Disc – Read-Only Memory) is a read-only high-capacity optical disc format. DVD-Video is a form of DVD-ROM, but DVD-ROM usually refers to DVD discs for data storage. Microsoft were the first major corporation to release software on DVD-ROM in 1997.
Capacities range from 4.7GB (for a single-sided, single-layer disc) to 17GB (for a double-sided, dual-layer disc).
DVD-ROM drives are backwards compatible with CD-ROM discs, and can read rewritable DVD media such as DVD-R/DVD+R and DVD-RW/DVD+RW.
Since around 2007, DVD drives (along with optical disc drives generally) have been disappearing from laptops and of course were never available in tablets. Despite this, a lot of computer software is still available on DVD-ROM.
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