The industry is set for yet another revolution with the introduction of Blu-ray Discs (BD) in 2006. With their high storage capacity, Blu-ray discs can hold and play back large quantities of high-definition video and audio, as well as photos, data and other digital content.

In this article, HowStuffWorks explains how the Blu-ray disc works and how it was developed, and we'll see how it stacks up against some other new digital video formats on the horizon.

A current, single-sided, standard DVD can hold 4.7 GB (gigabytes) of information. That's about the size of an average two-hour, standard-definition movie with a few extra features. But a high-definition movie, which has a much clearer image (see How Digital Television Works), takes up about five times more bandwidth and therefore requires a disc with about five times more storage. As TV sets and movie studios make the move to high definition, consumers are going to need playback systems with a lot more storage capacity.

Answered by Ashish Yadav , an ibibo Wizard, at 6:34 PM on October 01, 2008

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience. Recent development by Pioneer has pushed the storage capacity to 500GB on a single disc by using 20 layers.

Answered by Sonu , an ibibo Master, at 2:49 PM on October 01, 2008

Blue Ray is an HD-DVD format that uses a 405nm-wavelength blue-violet laser technology, in contrast to the 650nm-wavelength red laser technology used in traditional DVD formats. The rewritable Blu-ray disc, with a data transfer rate of 36Mbps, can hold up to 27GB of data on a single-sided single layer disc (compared to the traditional DVD’s 4.7GB capacity), which amounts to about 12 hours of standard video or more than 2 hours of high-definition video.
The Blu-ray format was developed jointly by Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Thomson, Hitachi, Matsushita, Pioneer and Philips, Mistubishi and LG Electronics.

Uses are as the same of Cd, DVD, and other secondary storage devices to store data.

Answered by Hem@nt .... , an ibibo Master, at 11:45 AM on September 30, 2008

There comes a time in any technological chain, however, where backwards compatibility too many drawbacks to make it cost effective or even seasonable. This happened when the market embraced DVD's over CD's, so we could have full length, high quality digital movies on a single disc. Blu-Ray quality laser drives will likely be a similar successful break from BC. Announced in late 2003, Blu - Ray optical drives use a blue laser instead of traditional red DVD laser or infrared CD laser. Blue lasers produce light at shorter wave length than the others, so pits and lands can pack more densely. Blu - Ray provides 23GB of storage on a 120mm disc. That translates into 13 hours of standard video (conveniently just over two hours of the forthcoming HDTV video). Planned improvements will take the capacity upto 100GB positioning these drivers to replace the VCR and disk based personal video recorders. Since a different laser type is required, Blu - Ray discs won't be payable in existing DVD players. However, DVD's and CD's of all current types should play in the Blu - Ray drivers with no troubles.

Answered by Nishu's , an ibibo Master, at 7:05 AM on September 30, 2008

well santosh Blu-ray Disc (also known as Blu-ray or BD) is an optical disc storage media format. Its main uses are high-definition video and data storage. The disc has the same physical dimensions as a standard DVD or CD.

The name Blu-ray Disc is derived from the blue laser (violet colored) used to read and write this type of disc. Because of its shorter wavelength (405 nm), substantially more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on the DVD format, which uses a red (650 nm) laser. A dual layer Blu-ray Disc can store 50 GB, almost six times the capacity of a double-dual layer DVD (or more than 10 times if single-layer).

During the high definition optical disc format war, Blu-ray Disc competed with the HD DVD format. On February 19, 2008, Toshiba — the main company supporting HD DVD — announced it would no longer develop, manufacture, and market HD DVD players and recorders,[2] leading almost all other HD DVD companies to follow suit, effectively ending the format war.

Blu-ray Disc was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association, a group representing consumer electronics, computer hardware, and motion picture production. As of September 20, 2008 more than 850 Blu-ray Disc titles have been released in the United States and more than 500 Blu-ray Disc titles have been released in Japan.[3][4] There are expected to be over 1200 Blu-ray Disc titles released in the United States by the end of 2008.[5]

ok

Answered by Abuzar , an ibibo Citizen, at 2:31 AM on September 30, 2008

Well Santhosh,
Blu-Ray is an optical storage format developed by Sony and Phillips. Blu-Ray was created to store large amounts of high definition video and sound. Blu-Ray gets its name from the type of laser it uses to read and write data from and to the disc, the color of the laser is a hue of blue-violet. Due to the extreme density of these optical discs the data needs to be smaller to fit onto the disc, a blue-violet laser has a shorter wavelength than the normal red lasers used today.

What is Blue ray doing that makes it so special?
While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM rely on a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. The benefit of using a blue-violet laser (405nm) is that it has a shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm), which makes it possible to focus the laser spot with even greater precision. Hence, you can store so much more on a Blue ray disk.

ADVANTAGES

Disc Capacity
The main advantage of Blu-Ray technology is its capability of storing massive amounts of data in one disc. Blu-Ray technology will enable users to store an average of 25GB-27GB worth of data into just one layer. This is equivalent to 4 hours worth of HD video and audio. Moreover, Blu-Ray dual layer discs will have a storage capacity of up to 54GB. Research on Blu-Ray discs with up to four layers and with storage capacities of up to 200 GB is currently underway.

BD Formats
There are three formats being developed for Blu-Ray technology. The BD-ROM or Blu-Ray read-only disc format will be used to store movies, computer games and software. The Blu-Ray recordable or BD-R will provide users the opportunity to store larger amounts of data and HDTV recordings in one disc. The BD-RE or Blu-Ray rewritable disc format will provide users the ability to change the disc's contents.

Regional Codes and Security
For security, Blu-Ray supports mandatory HDCP encrypted output, ROM-Mark watermarking, BD+ dynamic cryptology, and the Advanced Access Content System (AACS).

Answered by Bishan Preet , an ibibo Specialist, at 1:29 AM on September 30, 2008

well;
An HD-DVD format that uses a 405nm-wavelength blue-violet laser technology, in contrast to the 650nm-wavelength red laser technology used in traditional DVD formats. The rewritable Blu-ray disc, with a data transfer rate of 36Mbps, can hold up to 27GB of data on a single-sided single layer disc (compared to the traditional DVD’s 4.7GB capacity), which amounts to about 12 hours of standard video or more than 2 hours of high-definition video.

The Blu-ray format was developed jointly by Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Thomson, Hitachi, Matsushita, Pioneer and Philips, Mistubishi and LG Electronics.
The Japanese outfit will produce 25,000 single-layer 25 gigabyte Blu-ray discs per day, or up to 750,000 discs per month at its plant in Terre Haute in Indiana.

It aims to step up production to 50 million discs per month by October and manufacture 50 gigabyte dual-layer discs.

Part of the push will be to coincide with the PlayStation 3 launch in November, which will use the new format.

Blu-Ray players and computers are starting to hit the market and there will need to be a lot of discs to support that. Sony also plans to start releasing movie titles on the Blu-ray disc format from late June.

Of course, should HD-DVD win the format war, then all this industry will be like dust in the wind. µ

Answered by Kishore , an ibibo Master, at 11:44 PM on September 29, 2008

Blu-ray Disc (also known as Blu-ray or BD) is an optical disc storage media format. Its main uses are high-definition video and data storage. The disc has the same physical dimensions as a standard DVD or CD.

The name Blu-ray Disc is derived from the blue laser (violet colored) used to read and write this type of disc. Because of its shorter wavelength (405 nm), substantially more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on the DVD format, which uses a red (650 nm) laser. A dual layer Blu-ray Disc can store 50 GB, almost six times the capacity of a double-dual layer DVD (or more than 10 times if single-layer).

During the high definition optical disc format war, Blu-ray Disc competed with the HD DVD format. On February 19, 2008, Toshiba — the main company supporting HD DVD — announced it would no longer develop, manufacture, and market HD DVD players and recorders,leading almost all other HD DVD companies to follow suit, effectively ending the format war.

Blu-ray Disc was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association, a group representing consumer electronics, computer hardware, and motion picture production. As of September 20, 2008 more than 850 Blu-ray Disc titles have been released in the United States and more than 500 Blu-ray Disc titles have been released in Japan.There are expected to be over 1200 Blu-ray Disc titles released in the United States by the end of 2008.

Answered by ani , an ibibo Advisor, at 11:35 PM on September 29, 2008

well santosh,
its not Blueray, its Blu-Ray.
Blu-Ray is an optical storage format developed by Sony and Phillips. Blu-Ray was created to store large amounts of high definition video and sound. Blu-Ray gets its name from the type of laser it uses to read and write data from and to the disc, the color of the laser is a hue of blue-violet. Due to the extreme density of these optical discs the data needs to be smaller to fit onto the disc, a blue-violet laser has a shorter wavelength than the normal red lasers used today. Blu-Ray technology is so-named because of its use of blue laser technology in storing and reading data. Being on the shorter wavelength end of the light spectrum than the red laser used for DVD and CD technologies (405 nanometer for Blu-Ray versus 650 nanometer and 780 nanometer for DVD and CD technology), blue laser is capable of storing a much larger amount of data using the same space because of a much smaller "spot size" requirement. Blu-Ray's 405nm wavelength blue-violet laser uses an 0.85nm pickup aperture. Single-layer Blu-Ray disks currently store 23.3GB of data, which dual-layer Blu-Ray disks are able to store 46.6GB of data. There is currently a market war taking place against both HD DVD's and Blu-Ray DVD's. These two types of DVD's are fighting to see who will be the new form of media for the years to come. As of yet, neither media type has made enough inroads to garner a champion. Obviously the major benefit of Blu-Ray DVD's is that it is able to hold more data on one disc, therefore allowing high definition audio and video. The more data you have, the more data can be read to give a clearer picture with more color and vividness. One of the benefits of Blu-Ray technology is that because data is so close together, early types of Blu-Ray discs would be contaminated by slight scratches. However, a new coating has been developed that makes Blu-Ray discs extremely difficult to scratch. Blu-Ray is looking to make inroads into the consumer electronics market with the Blu-Ray DVD player with its Sony PlayStation. The Sony PlayStation will include a basic Blu-Ray DVD player which might spur sales of media and make it the de facto standard. The disadvantages to Blu-Ray discs are that they are quite expensive. For instance, players are selling at about the $1,000 mark and DVD discs will be more expensive than their standard DVD counterparts. Another disadvantage is that since there are two standards, both Blu-Ray and HD, most people are sitting on the sidelines to see who the winner is. Because Blu-Ray has been developed in part with Sony, Sony has included DRM or digital rights management that will make it more difficult for people to place shift and time shift their content.
Blu-Ray Technology:
BD Formats: There are three formats being developed for Blu-Ray technology. The BD-ROM or Blu-Ray read-only disc format will be used to store movies, computer games and software. The Blu-Ray recordable or BD-R will provide users the opportunity to store larger amounts of data and HDTV recordings in one disc. The BD-RE or Blu-Ray rewritable disc format will provide users the ability to change the disc's contents.
Disc Capacity: The main advantage of Blu-Ray technology is its capability of storing massive amounts of data in one disc. Blu-Ray technology will enable users to store an average of 25GB-27GB worth of data into just one layer. This is equivalent to 4 hours worth of HD video and audio. Moreover, Blu-Ray dual layer discs will have a storage capacity of up to 54GB. Research on Blu-Ray discs with up to four layers and with storage capacities of up to 200 GB is currently underway.
Supportable File Formats: Blu-Ray discs are capable of supporting different file formats such as MPEG-2, MPEG-4 High Profile AVC and VC-1 coder decoders which enables the discs to store up to four hours worth of HDTV audio-video per layer. It is also capable of supporting the different multi-channel audio f

Answered by Nz , an ibibo Master, at 11:24 PM on September 29, 2008