Chapter 1

4 Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About DVD
• Recognition and output of Digital Theater Systems (DTS) Digital Surround
audio tracks
• Playback of audio CDs
Some players include additional features:
• Component video output (YUV or RGB) for a higher-quality picture
• Progressive-scan component output (YUV or RGB) for highest-quality
analog picture
• Digital video output (SDI, 1394, or DVI] for perfect digital picture
• Six-channel analog output from internal audio decoder
• Playback of Video CDs or Super Video CDs, MP3 CDs, Picture CDs
and Photo CDs, laserdiscs, and CDVs
• Reverse single-frame stepping
• Reverse play (normal speed)
• RF output (for TVs with no direct video input)
• Multilingual onscreen display
• Multiple-disc capacity
• Digital zoom (2x or 4x enlargement of a section of the picture. This is
a player feature, not a DVD disc feature.)
What’s the Quality of DVD-Video?
DVDs have the capability to produce near-studio-quality video and betterthan-CD-quality
audio. They are vastly superior to consumer videotape and
generally better than laserdiscs (see “How Does DVD Compare to Laserdisc?”
in Chapter 2, “DVD’s Relationship to Other Products and Technologies”).
However, quality depends on many production factors. As
compression experience and technology improves, we see increasing quality,
but as production costs decrease and DVD authoring software becomes
widely available, we also see more shoddily produced discs. A few lowbudget
DVDs even use MPEG-1 encoding (which is no better than VHS)
instead of higher-quality MPEG-2.
DVD-Video is usually encoded from digital studio master tapes to the
MPEG-2 format. The encoding process uses lossy compression that
removes redundant information (such as areas of the picture that don’t