DVDs offer an improvement on image quality over VHS. They rapidly overtook VHS as the dominant format for home movie viewing. Nowadays, DVDs are also a major medium of data storage because of their extended storage capacity and better read/writing speed when compared to traditional CD's. DVDs can be described as optical disc with high density optical data.

DVD players are gadgets which are used to read the data from these optical discs. The data can be in any form ranging from images to movies. Here is a brief insight into the working of these players.

DVD players are equipped with an optical lens, emitting laser beams which strikes the sectors on the DVD and gets reflected back. The entire disk is read by using a high power motor which rotates the optical disks at high speeds so that all the sectors get passed over the optical lens once transferring data to it.

As the data gets transferred to the lens, codecs are used to decompress the highly compressed data. Nowadays, most of the DVD players come equipped with MPEG- 4 codec as compared to the old MPEG-2. After the decompression, the data is transferred to the television sets to which the DVD player is connected.

The most recent technological addition to DVD players is the 4.1 Dolby surround system. This feature provides for speakers with DVD player itself which can be placed in accordance with the room to give a surround sound effect. The speakers can be wired or wireless depending upon the budget and requirement of the user.

Most of the commercially available DVD players are accompanied with a fully equipped remote control and may also have an inlet for USB port which allows for connection of USB pen drives to view images, videos or playback audio tracks on the player itself.