What does ISO mean and is it related to discs

[Bambina]

I was in search of Terminator Salvation video. My friend had it and so I took the movie from my him. But the problem with that is that the file is of type .iso. This file is not played under Windows Media Player. How can I play this file? What does ISO mean and is it related to discs?

[Bull50]

An ISO image is an archive file (also known as a disk image) of an optical disc in a format defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). This format is supported by many software vendors. ISO image files typically have a file extension of .iso. The name ISO is taken from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media, but an ISO image can also contain UDF file system because UDF is backward-compatible with ISO 9660.

Source: wikipedia

[RockOn]

An ISO file is an image file of an entire CD, DVD or floppy disk. It contains all the files, folders and sector layout/ physical locations of data on that particular disk. You can use VLC player to play such files. However if you still want to use it under Windows Media Player then you need to install Klite codec pack.

[Blazej]

An ISO file is basically a type of CD image file. It acts the same way a zip file does. An ISO image includes all the data of files contained on the archived CD/DVD, or any other disc format. Rather than copying every file to your hard drive, it condenses the DVD or CD into an image file that only DVD/CD burning programs can read. Nero can burn these disk images for you.