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dvd's

DVD's can store the equivalent of a small library. This huge capacity is achieved by making spiral track that winds out from the centre very small - over a hundred times finer than a human hair. The total length of the spiral is over seven miles! If the DVD were as large as the millennium dome, the track would only be as wide as a grain of rice.

cd showing spiral track from centre

Even this is not enough to store an entire movie, so data compression is used to get rid of unnecessary data. This allows DVD's to store hours of film.

how does compression work?

further information

EPSRC