Getting to Know Blu-Ray

Blu-Ray.

You may have come across the term, and have wondered about just what Blu-Ray is.

Basically, Blu-Ray has become the new thing that has come to plague optical disk formats, and the craze over them. Following the popular DVD disc format, Blu-Ray stands to be the next development in optical storage media, boasting to have more storage space than regular DVD optical disc formats.

Blu-Ray is also labeled as Blu-Ray Disc or BD, for short. It is the product developed by the joint venture of the Blu-Ray Disc Association, which is composed of leading consumer electronics manufacturers, media manufacturers and personal computer makers. Brand companies like Hewlett Packard, Dell, TDK, Sony, Pioneer, Samsung, Philips, LG, JVC, Hitachi, Thomson, Panasonic, Sharp, and Apple comprise the Blu-Ray Disc Association, which has made quite a powerhouse optical disc format.

Blu-Ray stands to be the “next thing” after DVD, boasting an impressive storage capacity, ideal for the playback, recording and rewriting of High Definition Video formats, as well as the recording of really large amounts of data. Here’s a simple breakdown on just how impressive Blu-Ray is: Most single DVD discs could store up to 4.7 gigabytes, while most dual-layer DVD formats could store up to 8.5 gigabytes of storage space. With Blu-Ray optical discs, single-layer types could store up to 25 gigabytes of data, while dual-layer could store up to 50 gigabytes of data.

Basically, Blu-Ray Discs could house up to five DVD’s, which is truly quite something.

It is named as such because of the blue laser utilized in reading the media. DVDs and CDs utilize red colored laser, and stands to be the major difference between Blu-Ray and them, aside from the possible storage capacities which Blu-Ray could store.

Blu-Ray supports three different types of formats, BD-ROM, BD-R and BD-RE. BD ROM represents the read-only class of Blu-Ray discs, making them the DVD-ROM disk versions of Blu-Ray. High Definition movies, games and computer software could be easily stored into them, in great quantities. BD-R stands as the DVD-R class of writeable media, and is quite ideal for “burning” vast amounts of personal computer data, as well as HD video recording. BD-RE stands as the DVD-RW class of Blu-Ray, meaning that they are the re-writable class of Blu-Ray.

Not only is Blu-Ray impressive in size, it is also quite impressive in read/write speed, with its base, which could be 1x to be a 36Mbps. All discs are set at a minimum to be read at 72Mbps or on a 2x speed.

As the next thing to come after DVD, Blu-Ray is simply just impressive.
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