DVD is the optical storage medium. Holding the same physical dimensions as a CD, a single DVD holds between 4.7GB to 17GB of data.
The DVD standard was finalized in 1996. At that time, the DVD acronym stood for Digital Video Disc because the media could fit a feature-length film when compressed in MPEG-2 format. But because a DVD's use is multifold, including data storage, audio, and applications, the acronym's representation was changed to Digital Versatile Disc.
References: DVD Primer @ DVD Forum
