The guide to Blu-ray

In the world of HDTV, you have vastly superior picture quality over existing standards. Since the late 1960s,all television and video (including DVD) up until the High Definition era has been based on 625 horizontal lines, even widescreen digital television. Pre-HDTV technology is being referred to as SDTV (Standard Definition Television). With the migration to HDTV, new technology is needed to experience the amazing video and audio on offer. Although you can play existing DVDs on HDTV television sets and projectors, you're not going to see a tremendous leap in picture quality, because it's still based on the 625 lines of SDTV - you may as well watch it on your old telly! So, for the HD era, Sony has come up with a high-definition format called Blu-ray.

Blu-ray is supported by more than 170 of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer, recording media, video game and music companies. Names such as HP, JVC, Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, TDK, Thomson, Apple Computers, Dell and of course, Sony, are on-board this high definition revolution! Seven of the eight major movie studios have announced titles for Blu-ray. They include Warner, Paramound, Fox, Disney, Sony, MGM and Lionsgate. Blu-ray is the format used in Sony's latest games console - the powerful Playstation 3.

Don't fear the format war...

Yes, there's a rival format out there - HD-DVD. But like the recent battle of DVD-R vs DVD+R, the end result looks to be one of compromise, as there are already players out there that work with both formats. Not only that, but Blu-ray DVD players can play all the existing standard DVDs out there, as well as recordable DVDs and music CDs.

The Blu-ray benefit...

A lot more data and video can be stored on a Blu-ray DVD compared to a standard one. With up to 50GB available on movie discs as well as recordable media, you can have up to 9 hours of HDTV video on a Blu-ray disc, or 23 hours of SDTV (standard) video.

Blu-ray DVDs are incredibly durable, thanks to a special hard-coating from Sony and Panasonic's replication methods. Standing up to scratches and dirt, they've been rigorously tested with steel wool scratching, ballpoint pen usage and even having a metal pizza cutter run deeply over their surfaces, which did not affect playback/recognition. Even Sony's rewritable Blu-ray discs are sprayed with a scratch-resistant and antistatic coating. TDK have developed a clear polymer coating under the name of 'Durabis', which allows discs to be cleaned safely with only a tissue, and is said to successfully resist wire wool scrubbing.

Audio is even more deep, with 7.1 channels of surround sound catered for. Blu-ray discs can support encoding in up to 24-bit/192 kHz for up to six channels, or up to eight channels of up to 24-bit/96 kHz encoding. As a comparison, even new Hollywood films are mastered in only 24-bit/48 kHz, with 16-bit/48 kHz being common for ordinary films.

Here's the stats on why Blu-ray is such a remarkable jump in technology terms!

	Standard single layer DVD	Standard dual layer DVD	Blu-ray single layer DVD	Blu-ray dual layer DVD
Capacity	4.7GB	8.5GB	25GB	50GB
Hard coating	no		yes
Data transfer	11.08Mbps		36Mbps
Video codecs	MPEG-2		MPEG-2 MPEG-4 AVC SMPTE VC-1
Audio codecs	Linear PCM Dolby Digital DTS Digital Surround		Linear PCM Dolby Digital DTS Digital Surround Dolby Digital Plus Dolby TrueHD DTS-HD

Blu-ray compares well to its rival, HD-DVD, as single-layer discs in the HD-DVD format contain a maximum of 15GB. Even dual-layer HD-DVD discs go up to just 30GB, ensuring that in both versions, HD-DVD has just 60% of the data capacity of Blu-ray. Maximum video length on the HD-DVD platform is just 13.8 hours.

Both formats give you true HD, as they both support 1080i resolution, useful for those wanting the full HDTV experience.

Dynamic menus and content

All Blu-ray players use Java technology to bring interactive menus on Blu-ray discs, with more functionality than the static/video menus found on standard DVD. With network connectivity on devices hooked up to the internet, it's possible to have updates from the movie studios, adding content such as promotional features, additional subtitle languages and other items not included on the disc at pressing time.

In the future...

Expect quad-layer Blu-ray discs with an amazing 100GB of capacity - they've been demonstrated already at trade shows. TDK have created a six-layered disc capable of holding 200GB of data on a single side.

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