What Is Blu-Ray?
Author: Tim Childree

What is Blu-ray? No, it's not a creature of the deep or any
mythical beast. Blu-ray is a third-generation digital media or
data storage technology from the Blu-ray Disc Association, an
assembly of corporate media and electronics technology leaders.
Blu-ray discs are currently competing with HD-DVD to become the
new optical disc format. They have much more storage capacities
and data transfer speeds than conventional DVD's and CD's.

Blu-ray Disc Versus Other Optical Discs

A Blu-ray disc, looks much like any other optical disc,
including first-generation CDs, second-generation DVDs, and the
competing third-generation HD DVDs.

A Blu-ray disc system uses a blue-violet laser with a
wavelength of 405 nanometers to write and read data on the
optical disc. This laser is the source of Blu-ray's name and the
technology which differentiates Blu-ray from previous generation
optical media. The 405 nanometer blue-violet laser is also used
for writing and reading data on third-generation HD DVD discs,
which have smaller data storage capacity per layer. Older
optical media require a red laser for data storage and
retrieval.

Blu-ray Storage Capacity

The Blu-ray disc system uses a shorter wavelength than
conventional optical discs (CD systems use a red laser with a
wavelength of 780 nanometers whereas DVD systems use the same
red laser with a wavelength of 650 nanometers). The shorter
wavelength means more precise data recording, which allows more
data to be packed on the Blu-ray disc surface than a comparable
CD or DVD surface. In fact, a standard single-layer Blu-ray disc
can store as much as 25 GB of digital data, more than five times
the storage capacity of conventional DVDs. A dual-layer Blu-ray
disc can store a maximum of 50 GB of digital data. On the
drawing board are quadruple-layer Blu-ray discs with 100 GB
digital data storage capacities.

Blu-ray Support

To enjoy the considerable benefits of a Blu-ray disc, one must
have a Blu-ray disc player (either standalone or software-based)
that supports reading of the Blu-ray disc. Blu-ray video players
need to have an MPEG-2 codec (which makes a player capable of
playing DVDs and HD DVDs), a VC-1 codec, and an AVC or MPEG-4
codec. Movies stored in Blu-ray discs will use any one of the
above-mentioned codecs. One movie can also have more than one
codec, as long as each codec used is supported by Blu-ray
technology.

This article may be republished freely as long as this
copyright notice and box of resource links are included at the
bottom.

Copyright © 2007 MALIBAL, lLc


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