DVD discs are the next generation of optical storage media. They first appeared in 1996 on the Japanese market, and were available to the rest of the world a year later. However, the price of these new DVD-R discs were relatively high, and they quickly gained a competitor in the form of DVD+R discs, which were initially cheaper. Today, the prices of both disc types are practically the same. DVDs were manufactured in such a way that they looked almost identical to the established CD format. They are the same size and therefore DVD players and drives can also read CDs. Compared to CDs however, single-layer discs provide up to 4.7 GB of data space.
