DVD-ROM

DVD-ROM (an acronym for Digital Versatile Disc Read-Only Memory) is an optical media format that was popular in the early 2000s, superseding the CD-ROM format.

Specifications
The standard data rate of a video DVD is 1,353 KB per second, about nine times that of a standard CD at 1x speed. DVDs can also be double-layered and/or double-sided to further increase capacity.

History
Mac OS 8.1, released in January 1998, was the first classic Mac OS to include support for DVDs and the Universal Disk Format (UDF), superseding ISO 9660. Pioneer was the first company to manufacture DVD-ROM mechanisms for Macs.

A DVD-ROM drive was first introduced as a build-to-order option in the "Beige" Power Macintosh G3 in November 1997, and made its first portable appearance in the "Wallstreet" PowerBook G3 in May 1998. These were backwards compatible with CD-ROMs.

Apple introduced rewritable DVD-ROM drives under the "SuperDrive" brand with the 733 MHz Power Mac G4 in 2001. Lower-cost "combo" drives that could read DVDs and write CD-Rs were heavily promoted for the iMac G3 through Apple's "Rip. Mix. Burn" campaign.

In 2008, Apple introduced an external DVD±RW "SuperDrive" drive for use with the MacBook Air, the first MacBook model to contain no optical drive mechanism. Though Blu-ray discs superseded DVDs in the consumer market, Apple did not adopt them and phased out optical drives from its product line in 2012.