The Great DVD is a fictitious company that is part of a series of exercises in the course eCommerce, offered at Princeton University by the Operations Research & Financial Engineering Department Systems.
The premise underlying The Great DVD is that, in the not-too-distant future, a large number of people will either have DVD drives in their laptop/handheld computers or that they will have portable DVD players (not unlike portable tape players and/or portable CD players). Presumably, this will be a boon for air travelers because they will be able to watch whatever movie they would like, whenever they would like.
The Great DVD is a (fictitious) chain of DVD movie rental stores located in airports. Customers can rent movies on DVD at their originating airport and return them at their destination airport.
The course, Electronic Commerce, is concerned with the buying and selling of goods using electronic transaction processing technologies, especially those technologies that require little or no intervention on the part of the buyer or seller.
The first part of the course considers software technologies for electronic commerce (e.g., internet protocols, data and transaction processing). During this part of the course students must complete several exercises, most of which revolve around developing pieces of an e-commerce site for The Great DVD.
The second part of the course considers planning and operational issues (e.g., supply chain issues, risk, and internet pricing).
The third part of the course considers several case-studies.
The name, The Great DVD is a play on "the Great Divide", the highland that crosses New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, British Columbia, and Alberta. It is supposed to make you think of both travel and DVD. The logo, such as it is, is supposed to convey the impression of mountains.