A DVD burner encodes information onto a DVD, which can hold 4.7 GB of data. DVDs are affordable and widely used for videos. Burners replaced CD burners, but piracy is a concern. DVDs have a recording layer coated with organic dye or metal alloy for rewritable discs.
A DVD burner is a device used to encode or “burn” information onto a blank DVD. A DVD is a form of storage medium, 12 cm (4.72 inches) or 8 cm (3.15 inches) in diameter, which can typically hold 4.7 gigabytes (GB) of information. This is enough to hold a three hour high quality movie, ten TV episodes, approximately 75 hours of .MP3 files, or approximately 15 hours of video in the lower quality .AVI format. DVD is considered the successor to the conventional CD (compact disk), and common formats include DVD-R and DVD-RW, a rewritable version of DVD.
DVDs are usually quite cheap and cost even less when bought in bulk. The cost of these storage media declined rapidly in the late 1990s and early 2000s and continues to become more affordable as manufacturing costs decline. The burner allows this storage medium to become even more flexible than before.
Originally, the acronym “DVD” was meant to stand for digital video disc, but because it can hold any type of data, not just video, members of the intercompany DVD forum call it a digital versatile disc. DVD players became affordable around 1999, as their cost fell below $300 US dollars (USD). DVD burner has always been more expensive, but its price has also decreased.
The DVD burner has largely replaced its predecessor, the CD burner, largely because prices have dropped to the point where most computer owners can afford them. DVDs and recorders are widely used with videos, which are more memory intensive than text and music files.
A major concern for the industry is that the DVD burner could be widely used to pirate copyrighted DVDs. In fact, many people now download videos using file sharing programs and then burn them to DVD. However, most commercial discs have special protections to discourage copying.
A DVD has a recording layer coated with an organic dye. A DVD burning laser, of higher intensity than a typical DVD reading laser, etches patterns into the dye, allowing the data to be read later. A rewritable DVD uses a special metal alloy instead of a dye. The alloy can be switched back and forth between an amorphous and crystalline phase through the application of a laser, allowing the DVD to be rewritten a substantial number of times. However, the data quality deteriorates if the DVD is rewritten excessively.
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