A New Form of Digital Media: Blu-ray

Technology has come a very long way of the past years and has altered the method in which people vie their movies. You can probably remember the days when people watched their home movies through their VCR's. Of course these VHS tapes were bulky, consumer a lot of storage room, and output much lower quality visuals than seen today with DVD's and the emerging BD media. LaserDiscs's soon thereafter replaced the VHS and VCD's but this was short-lived when DVD was introduced to the scene. DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) was of course much more advanced than VCD and stored six times more information.

A single DVD with a storage capacity of 4.7 GB is capable of storing one full-length movie as well as other behind-the-scene footages and other extra features. Due to this, DVD's have had a major impact on the movie industry and as a result a greater number of people are purchasing DVD's to view in their homes. The DVD may however be replaced by a new technology that would further enhance the movie industry. This new technology is known as Blu-Ray.

Blu-Ray technology is considered to be the next-generation DVD. Blu-Ray Discs or BD can record, store and are able to play back more video, digital audio, as well as computer data. BDs can also store a full length high-definition movie which usually takes a higher bandwidth and storage space. Compared to DVDs. Blu-Ray Discs have the advantage on the amount of information that it can store. A single-layer BD has the capacity to store 27 GB of digital information. This single-layer BD is enough to hold more than two hours of high-definition videos or to hold more than 13 hours of standard video. A double-layer BD on the other hand can be able to store more than 4.5 hours of high-definition video because of its 50 GB storage capacity.

Laser lights are effectively the way in which optical disc storage media (for example DVD and Blu-ray) are able to read information, with Blu-ray utilizing blue violet rays whereas DVD uses red ultraviolet rays. The amount of information that can be stored in discs is dependent on how large and precise the laser light is. Blue laser has a shorter wavelength than that of red laser and because of this, blue laser is more precise and can write information in much smaller spaces. This is the reason why a lot more information can be stored in a Blu-Ray disc.

A huge storage capacity is not the only advantage of a Blu-Ray technology. Blu-Ray Discs can also transfer information at a higher rate. Blu-ray discs are so revolutionary because they are capable of a data transfer rate of 36 Mbps (megabits per second) whereas a standard DVD can only transfer at a rate of 10 Mbps.

Two technologies namely, Blu-ray and High Definition DVD (HD-DVD)are competing against each other to successfully become the official storage medium for the future of high definition media. Blu-Ray discs were first utilized by Sony in their PlayStation 3 games and because of this, BD is now becoming popular among giant movie production studios such as Warner Brothers which have stated that they will only release their High Definition movies in BD formats starting May of 2008.