What is Blu-ray?

If there’s one good thing about Blu-ray, it’s that it has a name, rather than a disparate group of initials with are sometimes hard to keep track of.

Basically, it allows the playback, recording and rewriting of high definition video (HD), as well as being able to store up to five times as much as a DVD.

Blu-ray, or Blu-ray Disc as it’s also labelled, is the latest generation of optical disc format. It has been jointly developed by the Blu-ray disc association which is made up of the world’s most influential personal computer, media, music, video games and consumer electronics companies. These number around 200 separate organisations and include, in alphabetical order, Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson.

And as well as doing all those things with high definition video, it has a storage capacity of up to 50GB on a dual layer disc. This means that this storage, combined with the advanced video and audio goodies, can give users a superb HD experience. And more recent developments have seen the storage size increase to an incredible 500GB over 20 layers.

And the reason for the name and where it differs from the DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM formats, is that it uses a blue-violet laser instead of a red laser.

Now, you might ask why a colour makes all the difference, but it really comes down to the size of the wavelength. A red laser, as used with DVDs, measures 650nm. Whereas the blue-violet laser measures 405nm and this shorter size means two things: it has a greater precision when collecting the data from the discs and because it’s more accurate, more data can be packed onto the discs.

And the great advantage is that Blu-ray products can be made backwards compatible with CDs and DVDs (in other words, a Blu-ray player can handle old formats), by using a BD/DVD/CD optical pickup unit.

Crucially, the format has the support of the industry, both hardware and software, and of Hollywood and numerous other studios around the world. It is seen by most as the natural successor to the DVD format, which should avoid the horrors of format wars, where consumers tend to pay the price with quickly redundant kit. Maybe the electronics industry is learning the lesson of not competing with varying formats as technology progresses.

And the catalogue of Blu-ray films and other material is quickly being developed and released.

It might not yet be so long DVD, it was nice knowing you, but it’s getting there. Now, what will they invent next, when Blu-ray becomes yesterday’s technology?

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