This next generation optical disc format - Blue Ray DVDs - is a proud development of the Blu Ray Disc Association (BDA) that include HP, Dell, LG, Hitachi, Apple, Samsung, Panasonic, JVC, Sony, Mitsubishi, Philips, Pioneer, Sharp, Thomson, and TDK. The BDA boasts 180 of the world’s leading consumer electronics, media and personal computer manufacturers.
DVDs, lets face it have its days counted. 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 solution to this problem has let to the development of two technologies - HD DVD and Blue Ray DVDs - that are now in fierce competition with each to gain market share and become the successor of the 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. The blu ray discs, as the name suggests, uses a blue-violet laser to read and write data unlike the current technology which uses 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 dual-layer HD-DVD can hold up to 30 GB whereas dual-layer blue ray DVDs can store 54 GB which is 4.5hours of high-definition video and more than 20hours of a standard video.
Blue ray DVDs are also light on the manufacturers since these are built by injection-molding process on a single 1.1-mm disc compared to the traditional injection-molding process on a 0.6 mm (HD DVD follow the same method) which thereby reduces costs. This savings balances out the expenses of adding the protective layer required on blu ray DVDs which means that the end price cannot be very different from the price of a regular DVD.