The standard home video LaserDisc was 30 cm (12 in) in diameter and made up of two single-sided aluminum discs layered in plastic. Although appearing similar to compact discs or DVDs, LaserDiscs used analog video stored in the composite domain (having a video bandwidth approximately equivalent to the 1-inch (25 mm) C-Type VTR format) with analog FM stereo sound and PCM digital audio. However, despite its analog nature, the LaserDisc at its most fundamental level was still recorded as a series of pits and lands much like CDs, DVDs, and even Blu-ray Discs are today. Note, however, that although the encoding is of a binary nature, that does not make it digital since the information is encoded as analog pulse width modulation with a 50% duty cycle, with the information contained in the lengths and spacing of the pits. This is unlike digital media where the pits, or their edges, directly represent 1s and 0s.[16] The spiral track of a LaserDisc is 67 km (42 mi) long. Early LaserDiscs featured in 1978 were entirely analog but the format evolved to incorporate digital stereo sound in CD format (sometimes with a TOSlink or coax output to feed an external DAC), and later multi-channel formats such as Dolby Digital and DTS.
Since digital encoding and compression schemes were either unavailable or impractical in 1978, three encoding formats based on the rotation speed were used: