What is the difference between a DVD and a CD?

apart from storage and pit size you can make out the difference between a cd and a dvd by simply looking at it . both cd and the dvd have shiny reading surface but since dvd has smaller pits and has pit density much more than a cd it has a darker violet tone on the surface

Somebody must have answered your question already. Sorry I'm just answering straight from my inbox. To answer your question, the main difference of a CD and a DVD is the capacity of storage. Which would mean that it can also hold a higher quality of movies which can be viewed in High-Def TVs. DVD players are actually "backwards compatible" which means it can play any CDs that has a lower format than a DVD.

The space between the rings of pits is smaller on DVD allowing more rings for storing much more data. DVD pit is deeper .12 mm compared to .11mm in Cd DVD uses shorter wavelength that increasing reading accuracy DVD Rom's 1x speed = 8x CD Speed With DVD , 11Mb/sec can be read whereas 1.41MB from CD

A CD has less storage capacity than a DVD.Look at the following CD / DVD storage capacity: 700MB / 4.7GB play time : 80mins / 120mins Maximum R/w speed: 52x / 16x And you have also asked that why DVD cannaot be played in CD player?.It is because DVD uses some higher technology than CD to Read and write.But your DVD player can play CD, because the read head(which is used in CD/DVD players to read the data stored in CDs and DVDs)of your DVD player is designed to read CDs also. One more info: Soon, bluray(it is similar to CD/DVD) is gonna come it and it cannot be played by our CD and DVD players

dvd storage capacity is 4.7gb and cd capacity is 700mb that too in dvd disks the pits and sectors or large than cd that why it cant play....

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