The biggest advantage of Blu-ray over its primary rival, HD DVD, is that unlike HD DVD, it’s still here. The major studios chose Blu-ray over HD DVD and thus Toshiba and its HD DVD consortium gave up the ghost. Blu-ray will be with us for years to come after vanquishing HD DVD by gaining the support of the major Hollywood studios. The format war between HD DVD and Blu-Ray, a competing format, in some ways echoes the format war between VHS and Betamax during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In 2008, major content providers and the most important retailers began withdrawing their support for the HD DVD format. Toshiba’s withdrawal from the format ended the high definition optical disc format war, and anointed Blu-Ray Disc as the dominant format. As part of the fallout, the HD DVD Promotion Group was disbanded on March 28, 2008, leaving Blu-ray the clear winner.
One of the advantages of the Blu-ray format over its late, great competitor is greater storage capacity. Single layer Blu-ray discs hold 25 GB of data, and the double layer Blu-ray discs will hold 50 GB of data, whereas HD DVD discs hold 15 GB as a single layer disc and 30 GB as a dual layer disc. Blu-ray is a new format and as it is developed further it will offer even more advantages storage-wise.
The name Blu-ray is derived from the blue laser (actually, violet colored) that is used by Blu-ray machines used to read and write this type of disc. This type of laser has a shorter wavelength than the kind used for regular DVDs, which means a lot more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on a DVD disc. DVD discs use a red laser. A dual layer Blu-ray Disc can store 50 GB of data or video almost six times the capacity of a double-dual layer DVD.
Another advantage of Blu-ray is that it is compatible with a very popular gaming console, the Sony PS3. Blu-ray is essentially the brainchild of Sony, but they didn’t do it alone. The Blu-ray Disc Association, a group representing consumer electronics, computer hardware, and motion picture production, developed Blu-ray Disc. By 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, and there are expected to be over 1500 Blu-ray Disc titles released in the United States by the end of 2008.
Blu-ray discs can be made to support various high definition formats. Broadcast high definition is shown in either the 720p format or the 1080i standard. While the 1080i ostensibly has more lines of resolution, it is interlaced (Thus the i next to the number). This means you are looking at 540 line fields rather than a full frame. In effect, 720p is basically higher resolution than 1080i as a result of this interlacing. The scan lines on 1080i don’t translate directly into more resolution.
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