What is Blu-ray?

Cast your minds back to 1997, yes it was the dawn of New Labour, but we’re talking about inventions that work (sorry got a bit political there!) 1997 saw the emergence of the DVD. It brought digital sound and video into homes all over the world, it revolutionised the film industry. Almost 10 years later another revolution was upon us with the introduction of Blu-Ray Discs (BD), higher storage capacity meant that these discs could hold and playback large amounts of high definition video and audio not to mention photos and other data and digital content. High definition of course means that the quality of the sound and vision is greatly increased allowing even more of a cinema experience in your own home. The standard DVD can hold 4.7 GB (gigabytes) if information while a blu-ray disc can hold up to 27 GB of data, 50 GB if is a double layer disc. While the DVD, DVD+R, DVD-R and DVD-RAM use red laser to read and write data, blu-ray uses a blue-violet laser instead which is where the name blu-ray is derived from. The benefit of using a blue-violet laser is that it has a shorter wavelength than a red laser which makes is able to focus the laser spot with even greater precision, if you can think of it in vinyl terms, a thicker needle will only pickup a a certain number of grooves on the record where a smaller, finer needle will run over much more and because the grooves can be smaller, more information can be stored. Makes sense?

Contenders Ready!
DVD and Bluray comparisons:

Storage Capacity
Single Layer DVD = 4.7 GB (about a 2 hour standard film with a few extras)
Single Layer Bluray = 27 GB (about 13 hours of standard video or 2 hours of high definition video)

With the price of bluray players coming down all the time, could the DVD’s time be up after only 10 years? even the humble VHS tape lasted longer.