Difference between video DVD and DVD-ROM

You may have seen that some of DVD discs are available as either DVDs or DVD-ROMs, however you may be unclear on what the actual differences are between the two. When you see a product referred to as being available on DVD, this means that it's a standard video disc, very similar to the commercial movie discs that you get from the video store. These discs contain regular broadcast NTSC video (North American video standard) or PAL video (Phase-alternating line), which are designed to play on a standard set-top DVD player for viewing on a television set. You can always watch video DVDs with a regular DVD/TV setup, if your computer supports video DVD playback, you can also watch it on your computer desktop.

DVD-ROMs, on the other hand, are only viewable on a computer. A DVD-ROM is physically the same type of disc as a video DVD, but does not contain broadcast video and is not viewable on a standard DVD/TV setup. Instead, DVD-ROMs contain a computer program which runs on Macintosh or Windows systems. A set-top DVD player cannot run a computer program, and so DVD-ROMs won't work in a video DVD player.


The advantage of DVD-ROMs over video DVDs is that DVD program provides for a much higher level of interactivity than a video DVD.