Blue Ray DVDs
This next generation optical disc format – Blue Ray DVDs – is a proud development of the Blu Ray Disc Association (BDA) that include HP, Dell, LG, Hitachi, Apple, Samsung, Panasonic, JVC, Sony, Mitsubishi, Philips, Pioneer, Sharp, Thomson, and TDK is a remarkable invention of the BDA (Blu Ray Disc Association) that consists of TDK, Thomson, Sharp, Pioneer, Philips, Mitsubishi, Sony, JVC, Panasonic, Samsung, Apple, Hitachi, LG, Dell and HP. The Blu Ray Disc Association has the globe’s most prominent manufacturers of PCs, consumer electronics and media.
The days of DVDs are numbered. With more and more people upgrading to HDTV to enjoy modern digital television, the need to store high-definition content is also on the rise. But, DVDs support a resolution up to 720×480 pixels while high definition content resolutions are as high as 1920×1080 pixels. HD video content uses up a considerable amount of hard drive space too. Two hours of HD content with data compression necessitates up to 22 GB of storage space while a DVD-18 disc (dual-sided dual-layer disc) has a storage capacity of only 17GB.
The solution to this problem has let to the development of two technologies – HD DVD and Blue Ray DVDs – that are now in fierce competition with each to gain market share and become the successor of the DVD. Though these two technologies are apparently similar to each other, the blue ray DVDs have a slight edge over the other as it boats of a greater amount of storage capacity than the HD DVD. As the name denotes, the blue ray discs make use of a blue-violet laser to write and read data in contrast to the existing technology which makes use of red laser. A blue-violet laser (405nm) has a far shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm) making it feasible to focus the laser spot with superior precision. The plus point in this is that as the data could be packed compactly it uses less space to store data and that fact lets users to add more data on the disc though the size of the disc is more or less the same as a CD/DVD.
A single-layer high definition DVD can hold only fifteen GB of data whilst single-layer blue ray DVDs can hold twenty-five GB which amounts to over two hours of HD video and thirteen hours of normal video. A double-layer High Definition-DVD can store up to thirty GB whilst double-layer blue ray DVDs can hold fifty-four GB which is 4.5 hours of HD video and more than 20 hours of normal video.
Blue ray DVDs are also light on the manufacturers since these are built by injection-molding process on a single 1.1-mm disc compared to the traditional injection-molding process on a 0.6 mm (HD DVD follow the same method) which thereby reduces costs. The money so saved is spent on the addition of a protective layer necessary on blue ray DVDs and this causes the end price to be more or less same with the current price of a DVD.
