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DVD (commonly "Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc") is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. DVDs resemble compact discs as their diameter is the same (120 mm (4.72 inches) or occasionally 80 mm (3.15 inches) in diameter), but they are encoded in a different format and at a much higher density.

All read-only DVD discs, regardless of type, are DVD-ROM discs. This includes replicated (factory pressed), recorded (burned), video, audio, and data DVDs. A DVD with properly formatted and structured video content is a DVD-Video. DVDs with properly formatted and structured audio are DVD-Audio discs. Everything else (including other types of DVD discs with video) is referred to as a DVD-Data disc. However, many people use the term "DVD-ROM" to refer to pressed data disks only.

There are several possible successors to DVD being developed by different consortiums: Sony/Panasonic's Blu-ray Disc (BD), Toshiba's HD DVD and Maxell's Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD).

The first generation of holographic media with 300 GB of storage capacity and a 160 Mbit/s transfer rate was scheduled for release in late 2006 by Maxell and its partner, InPhase.

On November 18, 2003, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported the final standard of the Chinese government-sponsored Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD), and several patents for it.[citation needed] Shortly thereafter the development of the format was halted by a licensing dispute between Chinese companies and On2 Technologies, but on December 6, 2006, 20 Chinese electronic firms unveiled 54 prototype EVD players and announced their intention for the format to completely replace DVDs in China by 2008.[citation needed]

On November 19, 2003, the DVD Forum decided by a vote of eight to six that HD DVD will be its official HDTV successor to DVD. This had no effect on the competing Blu-ray Disc Association's (BDA) determination that its format would succeed DVD, especially since most of the voters belonged to both groups.[citation needed]

On April 15, 2004, in a co-op project with TOPPAN Printing Co., the electronics giant Sony Corp. successfully developed the paper disc, a storage medium that is made out of 51% paper and offers up to 25 GB of storage, about five times more than the standard 4.7 GB DVD. The disc can be easily cut with scissors and recycled, offering foolproof data security and an environmentally-friendly storage media.

As reported in a mid 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics, it is not yet clear which technology will win the format war over DVD. HD DVD discs have a lower capacity than Blu-ray discs (15 GB vs. 25 GB for single layer, 30 GB vs. 50 GB for dual layer).

In April 2000, Sonic Solutions and Ravisent announced hDVD, an HDTV extension to DVD that presaged the HD formats that debuted 6 years later.[14] This situation—multiple new formats fighting as the successor to a format approaching purported obsolescence—previously appeared as the "war of the speeds" in the record industry of the 1950s. It is also, of course, similar to the VHS/Betamax war in consumer video recorders in the late 1980s.

The new generations of optical formats have restricted access through various digital rights management schemes such as AACS and HDCP; it remains to be seen what impact the limitation of fair use rights has on their adoption in the marketplace.