This future optical disc format – BRD (Blue Ray DVDs is a remarkable invention of the BDA (Blu Ray Disc Association) that consists of TDK, Thomson, Sharp, Pioneer, Philips, Mitsubishi, Sony, JVC, Panasonic, Samsung, Apple, Hitachi, LG, Dell and HP. The Blu Ray Disc Association has the globe’s most prominent manufacturers of PCs, consumer electronics and media.
The days of DVDs are numbered. With more and more people upgrading to HDTV to enjoy modern digital television, the need to store high-definition content is also on the rise. But, DVDs support a resolution up to 720×480 pixels while high definition content resolutions are as high as 1920×1080 pixels. High definition video content also consumes a lot of hard drive space. Two hours of HD content with data compression necessitates up to 22 GB of storage space while a DVD-18 disc (dual-sided dual-layer disc) has a storage capacity of only 17GB.
The answer to this issue has helped invent two brand-new technologies, namely High Definition DVD and Blue Ray DVDs, which are now locked in an intense battle to clinch market shares and become the successor to DVD. Both these technologies are very similar in nature but the blue ray DVDs have an advantage since these boast a far higher storage capacity than the HD DVD. As the name denotes, the blue ray discs make use of a blue-violet laser to write and read data in contrast to the existing technology which makes use of red laser. A blue-violet laser (405nm) has a far shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm) making it feasible to focus the laser spot with superior precision. The advantage of this is that, it permits data to be stored in less space since the data can be packed more tightly, which further, allows consumers to fit additional data on the disc even though it may be the same size as a CD or a DVD.
A single-layer HD-DVD disc only store 15 GB whereas single-layer blue ray DVDs can store 25 GB which is more than 2 hours of high-definition video and 13hours hours of standard video. A double-layer High Definition-DVD can store up to thirty GB whilst double-layer blue ray DVDs can hold fifty-four GB which is 4.5 hours of HD video and more than 20 hours of normal video.
Blue Ray DVDs are easy on the producers too as they are created by injection-molding procedure on a single 1.1-mm disc in contrast to the traditional injection-molding method on a 0.6 mm (High Definition DVD adopts the same process) which in turn cuts down on the costs. This savings balances out the expenses of adding the protective layer required on blue ray DVDs which means that the end price cannot be very different from the price of a regular DVD.