Forget DVDs, Welcome BRDs

Mr. Kunj Vakil

06BCA63 (S.Y.B.C.A.)

Blu-ray Disc

In 1997, a new technology emerged that brought digital sound and video into homes all over the world. It was called DVD, and it revolutionized the movie industry.

The industry is set for yet another revolution with the introduction of Blu-ray Discs (BD). With their high storage capacity, Blu-ray discs can hold and play back large quantities of high-definition video and audio, as well as photos, data and other digital content.

The Blu-ray name is a combination of "blue", for the color of the laser that is used, and "ray", for optical ray. The "e" in "blue" was purposefully left off, according to the manufacturers, because an everyday word cannot be trademarked

What is a Blu-ray Disc?

A current, single-sided, standard DVD can hold 4.7 GB (gigabites) of information. That's about the size of an average two-hour, standard-definition movie with a few extra features. But a high-definition movie, which has a much clearer image takes up about five times more bandwidth and therefore requires a disc with about five times more storage. As TV sets and movie studios make the move to high definition, consumers are going to need playback systems with a lot more storage capacity

 
Blu-ray Advantages:

• Record high-definition television (HDTV) without any quality loss
• Instantly skip to any spot on the disc
• Record one program while watching another on the disc
• Create playlists
• Edit or reorder programs recorded on the disc
• Automatically search for an empty space on the disc to avoid recording over a program
• Access the Web to download subtitles and other extra features

Blu-ray has a higher data transfer rate -- 36 Mbps (megabits per second) -- than today's DVDs, which transfer at 10 Mbps. A Blu-ray disc can record 25 GB of material in just over an hour and a half.

Unlike current DVDs, which use a red laser to read and write data,  Blu-ray uses a blue laser (which is where the format gets its name). A blue laser has a shorter wavelength (405 nanometers) than a red laser (650 nanometers). The smaller beam focuses more precisely, enabling it to read information recorded in pits that are only 0.15 microns (µm) (1 micron = 10^-6 meters) long -- this is more than twice as small as the pits on a DVD. Plus, Blu-ray has reduced the track pitch from 0.74 microns to 0.32 microns. The smaller pits, smaller beam and shorter track pitch together enable a single-layer Blu-ray disc to hold more than 25 GB of information -- about five times the amount of information that can be stored on a DVD.

Blu-ray discs are better armed than current DVDs. They come equipped with a secure encryption system -- a unique ID that protects against video piracy and copyright infringement.

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