Why can I fit more than a 4.37 GB movie on a 4.7 GB blank disc?
When you buy a single-layer blank disc, you may see 4.7 GB on it. This is actually a marketing strategy and in actual computing terms, it is not 4.7 GB that should be written. The correct number should be 4700000000 bytes. Here is a comparison between marketing and computing definitions: Marketing: 1 KB is equivalent to 1000 bytes Computing: 1 KB is equivalent to 1024 Bytes Marketing: 1 MB is equivalent to 1000 KB or 1000000 Bytes Computing: 1 MB is equivalent to 1024 KB or 1048576 Bytes Marketing: 1 GB is equivalent to 1000 MB or 1000000000 Bytes Computing: 1 GB is equivalent to 1024 MB or 1073741824 Bytes After all these definitions, you can see that marketing people will divide 4700000000 by 1000000000 to obtain 4.7 GB (which is not real)! The correct calculation should be 4700000000 divided by 1073741824 which amounts to 4.37 GB. This is the maximum amount of data that can fit on a single layer DVD.
