The Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) is a new optical recording medium with a storage capacity seven times higher than the conventional Compact Disc. The major part of the capacity increase is achieved by the use of optics, shorter laser wavelength and larger numerical aperture, that reduces the spot diameter by a factor 1.65. The track formed by the recorded pits and lands as well as the track pitch can be reduced by the same factor. The storage capacity is further increased by a complete redesign of the logical format of the disc including a more powerful error correction and recording code. We outline the system requirements of the Digital Versatile Disc and the related channel coding. (6 pages)