DVD Demystified

16
TABLE 1.2
Notations Used in
This Book
Notation Meaning Magnitude Variations Example
b bit (1)
kbps thousand 10 3 Kbps, kb/s, Kb/s 56 kbps modem
bits per second
Other Conventions
Chapter 1
Mbps million 10 6 mbps, mb/s, Mb/s 11.08 Mbps DVD
bits per second data rate
B byte (8 bits)
KB kilobytes 2 10 Kbytes, KiB 2 KB per DVD sector
KB/s kilobytes 2 10 KiB/s 150 KB/s CD-ROM
per second data rate
MB megabytes 2 20 Mbytes, MiB 650 MB in CD-ROM
M bytes million bytes 10 6 Mbytes, MB 682 M bytes in CD-ROM
MB/s megabytes 2 20 MiB/s 1.32 MB/s DVD
per second data rate
GB gigabytes 2 30 Gbytes, GiB 4.37 GB in a DVD
G bytes billion bytes 10 9 Gbytes, GB 4.7 G bytes in a DVD
TEAMFLY
Spelling The word disc, in reference to DVD or CD, should be spelled
with a c, not a k. The generally accepted rule is that optical discs are spelled
with a c, whereas magnetic disks are spelled with a k. For magneto-optical
discs, which are a combination of both formats, the word is spelled with c
because the discs are read with a laser. The New York Times, after years of
head-in-the-sand usage of k for all forms of data storage, revised its manual
in 1999 to conform to industry practice. Standards bodies such as
ECMA and the International Standards Organization (ISO) persist in
spelling it wrong, but what can you expect from bureaucracies? Anyone
writing about DVD who spells it as disk instead of disc immediately puts
his or her readers on notice that he or she does not understand what he or
she is talking about.