Blu-ray Vs HD-DVD Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Blu-ray Vs HD-DVD - Essay Example DVD or 'Digital Versatile Disc' or 'Digital Video Disc' has been round the corner for quite a while now, but Blu-ray is a relatively newer technique. With the arrival of every new technique, a debate starts taking place whether the immediate predecessor has lived its useful life or not. Similar debate is taking place in the IT industry with arrival of Blu-ray storage device. Advanced version of DVD is known as HD-DVD. This High Definition DVD or High Density DVD has more storage than a normal DVD. But with the arrival of Blu-ray question marks are being raised on its useful life as well. In fact there's lot more to these types of debates, other than technological issues. Now in the market driven economies, the newer versions of any product/ technology are being patronized by some big corporate house, therefore industrial rivalry takes a central stage on such matters. Similar is the case of Blu-ray Vs HD-DVD. Blu-ray technology developed by Sony and others has started gathering suppor t from companies like Phillips, while Toshiba is going ahead with newer experiments in the HD-DVD series. As always happens consumer happens to be the ultimate beneficiary of this cutthroat competition. In fact the speed of change in technology is so fast and furious that while on the one hand the HD-DVD, introduced in 1997, is still being experimented with for more storage, the Blue-ray Disc (BD) has arrived with a bang. Which way to go The name Blu-ray is in fact a combination of 'blue', for the color of the laser that is used, and 'ray', for the optical ray. It is worthwhile here to mention that the earlier disc recorders, readers use red laser ray. The letter "e" in "blue" was purposefully left off, according to the group of manufacturers, as an everyday word cannot be trademarked, thus Blu-ray was born. Blu-ray Disc (BD), a next-generation optical disc format is 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). This format too will support enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD) besides storing large amounts of data. There are basically three types of Blu-ray formats planned: i. BD-ROM for pre-recorded media such as software, games and movies ii. BD-R (recordable) for HDTV recording and PC data storage iii. BD-RE (rewritable) for HDTV recording and PC data storage Some of the distinctive features of Blu-ray are; This 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. That implies more than two hours of high-definition video or about 13 hours of standard video on a single sided BD while enough to hold about 4.5 hours of high-definition video or more than 20 hours of standard video on a double sided BD. BD can record high-definition television (HDTV) without any quality loss The listener/user can instantly skip to any spot on the disc Most interesting feature of this format is that we can record one program while watching another on the disc We can create playlists for quick access to our preferred data bank We an also edit or reorder programs recorded on the Blu-ray disc A BD automatically search for an empty space on the disc to avoid recording over a program. BD