The Specifics of Blu-ray Discs
Blu-ray currently holds the monopoly for high definition discs, although most people would not complain due to its fair price and perfect quality. With a high definition television, anybody can experience the power of Blu-ray.
The Blu-ray Disc Association is responsible for creating the Blu-ray standard. It is comprised of almost two hundred mega-corporations, all of which have a stake in Blu-ray’s success. They developed the format over a period of years before completing it in 2004.
The great thing about Blu-ray is how much data it can store. This is the most important factor of a medium because it determines vital features like picture quality. Regulary BDs store twenty-five gigabytes.
The storage capacity of Blu-ray discs can be increased by adding more layers to the disc itself. Each layer adds 25MB of space, and as of now, only single and dual-layer discs exist, so the maximum capacity is 50GB. In the future, as many as eight layers could be installed in each disc, meaning the maximum capacity would reach two hundred gigabytes!
The breakthrough with Blu-ray discs is the wavelength of the reading laser, which is around three hundred nanometers shorter than DVDs (blue and red, respectively). The shorter wavelength maximizes the usable area on the disc surface and creates more storage capacity.
As for the speed of a Blu-ray disc, it plays at 36Mbps at 1x. Since future formats will require more speed, the rate will be increased to as high as 8x. Higher speeds can be reached, but the limiting factor is the hardware currently available.
Blu-ray and DVD are two separate things, but there may be a way to combine them in a Blu-ray/DVD disc. That way, those who didn’t have a Blu-ray or DVD player could still watch the movie. However, since DVD will eventually become obsolete any way, there may be no great purpose in pursuing this.
