Blue-Ray

The advent of high definition TV in the late 1990s took viewers to an entirely new level of video and audio quality. In addition, it also offered up to 5.1 channels of digital audio. In time, a demand arose for a media with similar quality of picture and sound, which could be played back just like a standard DVD.

Therefore, the world's leading consumer electronics, computer and media manufacturers combined to develop a next generation optical disc format. The conventional DVD uses a red laser to read and write data on the disc; while this new format uses a violet-blue laser, or a blue-ray for the purpose, hence the name.

The blue-ray laser has a shorter wavelength than that of a red laser and can be focused with greater precision. The data can be packed more tightly and stored in a much smaller space, to contain more data on a disc of the same size as a standard DVD. A blue-ray disc can store up to 25 GB (50 GB for a dual layered disc) of data compared to 5 GB of a conventional DVD. A 50 GB blue-ray disc can store up to 9 hours of high-definition (HD) video and up to 24 hours of standard-definition (SD) video.

The association of blue-ray technology developers named itself as the Bluray Disc Association (BDA) and includes such leading names as Apple, Dell, Sony, Philips, LG and Samsung. To register the technology as a brand name, the BDA chose the name Blu-ray Disc (since the name blue-ray was too generic), abbreviated as BD. Also, the spelling was modified as Blu-ray instead of Blue-Ray or Blue-ray. Thus, a Samsung blue ray DVD player should be correctly spelled as a Samsung blu ray DVD player. Yet, it is still commonly spelt as blue-ray.

The blue-ray format is presently supported by more than 200 of the world's leading consumer electronics, computer, music recording and game companies. Leading consumer electronics companies have also started selling blue ray players in the stores. The format is also supported by all major and minor Hollywood studios. Most of the studios have already started releasing blue ray films.

To be fair, BD is not the only technology based on the blue-ray. In fact, Toshiba and NEC had developed a technology parallel to bluray, and it was called the HD-DVD. But the BD technology had a slight edge in terms of storage capacity and had the support of an overwhelming majority of content providers and hardware manufacturers. In February 2008, Toshiba announced that it will stop production of players based on HD-DVD technology. The Toshiba HD DVD player was the only high def DVD player based on the HD-DVD technology.

The BDA expects all blue ray players to be backward compatible with the DVDs. Also, most of the manufacturers provide for upscaling DVD players that the customer currently uses to get as close as possible to the high definition format of 1080p/1080i. The customers can enjoy high definition viewing with their conventional DVDs when playing back on blue ray DVD players. For that matter, one can also enjoy high definition viewing using an HDMI DVD player.