What is the reflective side of a DVD?
A reflective coating is applied to the top of the disc which serves to protect the data as well provide a reflective surface for an optical reader which reads the data by focusing a tiny laser from the bottom of the disc onto the reflective material and back to the data.
Table of Contents
What are the layers of DVD?
Prerecorded DVDs (DVD-ROM) can be manufactured with one or two recorded layers on each side.

- 3.1 Polycarbonate (Plastic) Substrate Layer.
- 3.2 Data Layer.
- 3.3 Metal (Reflective) Layer.
- 3.4 Lacquer (Metal Protective) Layer (CDs)
- 3.5 Optional Surface Layer.
What is the shiny part of a CD made of?
The surface of a CD is reflective because the disc is coated with a thin layer of aluminum or sometimes gold. The shiny metal layer reflects the laser that is used to read or write to the device. A layer of lacquer is spin-coated onto the CD to protect the metal.
How many layers does a DVD have?
DVD
The data side of a DVD manufactured by Sony DADC | |
---|---|
Capacity | 4.7 GB (single-sided, single-layer – common) 8.5 GB (single-sided, double-layer) 9.4 GB (double-sided, single-layer) 17.08 GB (double-sided, double-layer) Up to four layers are possible in a standard form DVD. |
Read mechanism | 300–650 nm laser, 10.5 Mbit/s (1×) |
How do I know if my DVD is dual layer?
Normally if you look carefully at all the symbols on the face plate of the drive you will see on the DVD Multi icon. At the bottom of that, you should see a little R DL. That means it will write Dual Layer.

What part of a DVD is read?
The dull side usually has a label on it telling you what’s on the CD; the shiny side is the important part. It’s shiny so that a laser beam can bounce off the disc and read the information stored on it.
Is DVD-R single layer?
DVD R DL can hold 8GB or approximately 4 hours of DVD quality video on a single disc. Can I record over video/audio/data stored on a DVD R DL disc? No. DVD R DL discs are dual layer DVD’s designed for one-time recording.
Are all DVD dual layer?
Many current DVD recorders support dual-layer technology, and the price is now comparable to that of single-layer drives, though the blank media remain more expensive.
Why are CDs iridescent?
It’s made of aluminum coated with plastic. The colors that you see on the CD are created by white light reflecting from ridges in the metal. When light reflects off or passes through something with many small ridges or scratches, you often get rainbow colors and interesting patterns.
Which laser is used in DVD player?
In the case of CD-R, an infrared laser with a wavelength of 780 nanometers (nm) is employed, while DVD-R uses a red laser with a wavelength of 635 nm.
Can any DVD drive read dual layer?
Yes. Dual layer media plays just fine in standard DVD players.
Can all DVD drives read dual layer?
Typically only the newer DVD recorder drives will be able to write to dual layer or double layer discs.
Does a DVD read from the inside out?
Note that DVDs (and Blu-rays) play from the inside of the disc to the outside edge, and the dispersion of the dye layer on DVD-Rs is more likely to have issues from the middle to the outer edge, so these problems are most likely to show up halfway through or more.
How do I know if my DVD is single layer?
Each writable layer of a DVD has a spiral track of data. On single-layer DVDs, the track always circles from the inside of the disc to the outside. That the spiral track starts at the center means that a single-layer DVD can be smaller than 12 centimeters if desired.
Can my DVD burn dual layer?
In order to burn a Dual-Layer DVD, your burner has to be able to adjust the optical laser used to write data to the disk in a way that allows it to bypass the first writeable layer and write data to the second layer.
Why do CDs reflect rainbows?
Why does a CD reflect rainbow colors? Like water drops in falling rain, the CD separates white light into all the colors that make it up. The colors you see reflecting from a CD are interference colors, like the shifting colors you see on a soap bubble or an oil slick.
Is CD tape reflection or refraction?
A CD is a mirrored surface with spiral tracks or pits. These tracks are evenly spaced and diffract the sunlight (separating the colors). Because the CD’s surface is mirrored, the light is reflected to your eye.
How does a DVD laser work?
A DVD player is very similar to a CD player. It has a laser assembly that shines the laser beam onto the surface of the disc to read the pattern of bumps . The DVD player decodes the MPEG-2 encoded movie, turning it into a standard composite video signal.
Which Colour laser is used in DVD?
red laser
Current DVDs employ a 650-nanometer red laser and have a recording capacity of 4.7 Gbytes. The Blu-ray Disc’s 405-nm blue-violet laser enables the recording and rewriting of up to 27 Gbytes of data.
What part of a DVD is read first?
nigelwright7557. It starts at the inside because you might be using the smaller cd discs and so there would be no disc at the outside edge.
Do burned DVDs wear out?
CDs and DVDs can degrade over time because their recording layers are made with a dye that is extremely photosensitive; it deteriorates when exposed to UV rays over time. Since information burned to a disc is stored in the dye layer it can cause failure in playback.
How do I know if my DVD is single layer or double layer?
Does a CD reflect or refract light?
As we saw in the question on rainbows, white light is made up of all different colors of light. Or, they may reflect exactly out of phase, and red will be eliminated. On a CD, the surface is mirrored so the rainbow colors are much more intense. (See How CDs Work for a description of a CD’s construction.)
Why are CDs reflective?
The CD is arranged in a tiny mirror side by side!
Scattered lights interfere with each other. As a result, light is reflected only at certain angles. For light with the visible wavelengths to cause diffraction, the spacing must be very short, as a CD’s surface.
Does CD act like Prism?
The CD acts like a prism because the narrow grooves are so close to each other that you cannot see the separation. But, white light will be separated by the grooves. Another name for this CD phenomenon is diffraction.