Re: How does a DVD player work? How is it different from a VHS player?

Digital Video Disc (also known as Digital Versatile Disc)
VHS is short form for Video Home System (*JVC's video format*)

DVD is the successor to the CD-ROM, holding 20-times more audio, video or 
PC data than what it does today.

It is optical storage medium with improved capacity and bandwidth over the 
Compact Disc. The first DVD drives for computers are read-only drives 
("DVD-ROM"), providing 7+ times the storage capacity of CD-ROM 
(4.7GBytes). Write-once DVD-R ("recordable") drives will record a 3.9GB 
DVD-R disc that can be read on a DVD-ROM drive. 

CDs. DVD comes in essentially two types: The DVD player that hooks up to 
your TV like a VCR for watching movies and listening to music, or a DVD 
drive that hooks up to your computer to run software, as well as play 
movies and music. The technology is backwards compatible so you can keep 
using your old CDs.

DVD-RAM is a new type of rewritable storage medium that's based on compact 
disc technology. But whereas a common CD holds a maximum of 650MB of data, 
DVD-RAM can hold 5.2GB-- about eight times as much. One of these 5.2GB 
discs can hold as much data as 3,600 floppy disks or a stack of phone 
books that rises 24 stories.

The DVD player brings digital sound and imagery into your living room, 
with twice the resolution of VHS tape and Dolby sound. Players run from 
anywhere from $350 to over $2,000. Standard features in a typical DVD home-
system is...

Special effects playback, such as freeze, step, slow, fast and scan 
Digital audio output 
Programmability 
Parental locks 

DVD drives greatly optimize the performance of graphic and multimedia-
heavy programs such as games or reference works, as well as let you watch 
movies on your PC. 

Hope this helps a little bit ..thanks