DVD-Video

DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVDs. DVD-Video was the dominant consumer home video format in most of the world in the 2000s. As of 2026, it continues to compete with its high-definition Blu-ray Disc counterpart, while both receive competition as the collective delivery method of physical media by streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+. Discs using the DVD-Video specification require a DVD drive and an MPEG-2 decoder (e.g., a DVD player, or a computer DVD 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, the data rate for DVD movies ranges from 3 to 9.5 Mbit/s, and the bit rate is usually adaptive. DVD-Video was first available in Japan on October 19, 1996 (with major releases beginning December 20, 1996), followed by a release on March 24, 1997, in the United States.

The DVD-Video specification was created by the DVD Forum and was not publicly available. Certain information in the DVD Format Books is proprietary and confidential; licensees and subscribers were required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The DVD-Video Format Book could be obtained from the DVD Format/Logo Licensing Corporation (DVD FLLC) for a fee of $5,000. The FLLC announced in 2024 that licenses would no longer be needed.