Dear dumb guy: How do they manage to fit so much information onto a DVD, when a CD is the same size and it doesn’t hold nearly as much? - Computer Newbie in Newport

Dear Newport: Tough question. I actually had to do some research on this one, and here’s what I came up with: there actually is no difference at all between CDs and DVDs. They can both hold the same amount of stuff, provided it’s the same kind of stuff.

What do I mean? Well, music takes up more space than movies because of all the different instruments involved. They’re a lot bigger. Movies, on the other hand, are just pictures, so they don’t need as much room. But you think about a CD of a symphony orchestra playing – that’s huge! It needs a ton of room to store all those instruments. As opposed to the typical movie, which only has 8 or 10 people in it. So you can see, common sense says you’re going to fit a lot more on a disc that just has movies on it, than on one that has music.