Intel is the current owner of DVI, which was one of the first systems that provided practical full-motion video incorporating real-time decompression technology. DVI originated in 1984 at the David Sarnoff Research Center in Princeton, New Jersey, which was the central research facility for RCA Corporation. Ownership of DVI changed in 1986 when RCA was acquired by GE. The official unveiling of GE DVI occurred in March 1987 at the Second Microsoft CD-ROM Conference in Seattle, Washington. GE later sold DVI technology to Intel Corporation in October 1988.
DVI is actually both the name of the Digital Video Interactive hardware system sold by Intel and the file format associated with that system. DVI technology is essentially a PC-based interactive audio/video system used for multimedia applications. The DVI system consists of a board for use in an Intel-based PC, drivers, and associated software. The four components of DVI technology are:
- DVI hardware chipset
- Run-time software interface
- Data compression and decompression schemes
- Data file formats

The heart of the DVI system is the hardware architecture based on the video display processor (VDP) chipset. DVI technology was originally designed for implementation on the IBM PC AT platform. A collection of three 16-bit, ISA-bus DVI interface boards (audio, video, and CD-ROM) were plugged into the AT, and all of the hardware capabilities were accessed through the run-time software interface. The functions in the interface were called by writing a software program using a programming language such as assembly or C.

Today, Intel distributes licenses to third-party developers who want to incorporate DVI technology into their platforms and multimedia products. All of IBM's multimedia hardware platforms (such as the ActionMedia II boards) and software applications are based upon DVI technology.