The Audio-Visual Revolution
- a site about the Audio-Visual Revolution.
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Blu Ray DVDs are the next step in the audio-visual revolution, they will surpass all other forms of digital recording, with superior sound and video produced by further reducing the gaps between the tracks and the gaps between the bumps in the disc surface Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the next-generation optical disc format. it was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). Blu-ray DVDs are capable of storing large amounts of data. A single-layer Blu-ray Disc can hold 25GB. There are also dual-layer versions of the discs that can hold 50GB.
While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser instead, which is where the name Blu-ray is derived from. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup and allow playback of CDs and DVDs. The benefit of using a blue-violet laser (405nm) is that it has a shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm), which makes it possible to focus the laser spot with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly and stored in less space, so it's possible to fit more data on the disc even though it's the same size as a CD/DVD. This together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 is what enables Blu-ray Discs to hold 25GB/50GB.
Blu-ray was designed to support direct recording of the MPEG-2 TS (Transport Stream) used by digital broadcasts, which makes it highly compatible with global standards for digital TV. This means that HDTV broadcasts can be recorded directly to the disc without any quality loss or extra processing. To handle the increased amount of data required for HD, Blu-ray employs a 36Mbps data transfer rate, which is more than enough to record and playback HDTV while maintaining the original picture quality. In addition, by fully utilizing an optical disc's random accessing features, it's possible to playback video on a disc while simultaneously recording HD video.
Blu-ray is to be the next step in digital recording. The format will most likely undergo further improvements in the next few years.