Blu-ray Disc Media Is The Next Generation In Optical Disk Technology

By Author: Tank Gonzalez
Total Articles: 44
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Media technology, especially in the home entertainment segment, has grown by leaps and bounds, from vinyl records, video and audio cassettes, CDs and DVDs and now the latest entrant is Blu-ray media. Blu-ray is the new generation disk technology and it outstrips the old DVDs by leaps and bounds in terms of memory capacity, video quality and speed. Blu-ray media technology entered the markets a few years back and immediately grabbed everybody's attention because of its ability to store videos in HD format and large memory capacity. It makes viewing movies at home an altogether new experience with superb video quality and sound. The market has exploded with Blu-ray and it is entering almost all aspects of the market. Computers and laptops are come preloaded with Blu-ray disc readers and writers, Blu-ray disc players and home theatre systems, gaming consoles that use Blu-ray discs, blank Blu-ray discs for storage and other purposes; in short Blu-ray is all set to become the next big thing in media technology.

The Exact Science of Blu-ray

Ever since the development of HD media, there had been no disc technology like ...
... the CD or DVD that could contain the vast sizes and codecs of High Definition videos. Shuji Nakamura, the inventor of Blu-ray, discovered that by using a laser of shorter wavelength to burn in the storage into the disc one could create higher capacity in the disc. So instead of using the red laser used by DVDs, they used blue laser on a disk, hence the name Blu-ray.

The storage capacity of a Blu-ray disk is its strongest plus point. A normal DVD has a storage capacity of 4.5 GB and a dual layer DVD has 9 GB of storage. The HD-DVD, the erstwhile rival to the Blu-ray disk, had a capacity of 15GB and the dual layer HD-DVD had a capacity of 30GB. The Blu-ray disk trumps all these capacities as one normal Blu-ray disk has 25 GB of capacity and a dual layer Blu-ray disk has 50GB of capacity. This means that a Blu-ray disk can capture a full HD 1080p resolution image so it can play full HD videos. Its resolution of 1920 X 1080 is also greater than the 768 X 480 resolution of a standard DVD.
The other plus point of the Blu-ray is its signal speed or bandwidth. The Blu-ray disk can produce signals of up to 36Mbps compared to 1.32Mbps for a normal DVD.

Another great feature ingrained in the Blu-ray media players ensures that your old DVDs do not become redundant. These players upscale the video quality of the DVD when they play them by converting a DVD's resolution to a higher level required for HDTV. This does not change the resolution but improves the picture quality.

The positives of Blu-ray technology show us that it is a clear winner and will change home entertainment for the better. Blu-ray is the next best thing and is the technology for the next generation. It is only a matter of time before it penetrates the market and then before you know it, it will be in everybody's household.

Jimmy Wattsoner writes about consumer and professional electronics for the professional CD, DVD and Blu-ray blank media industry. Specializing in Blu-ray media and blank Blu-ray. Visit us: http://www.gotmedia.com/blu-ray-disc-recordable.html .