Optical storage technologies has been developing fast, DVD and Blu-ray technology are the most commonly used optical storage technologies in our daily life. According to research outfit In-Stat, Blu-ray Devices has increased a lot and started to account for a larger chunk in the disc player and recorder market. This means the Blu-ray is increasing at a rapid speed. Which one do you think shall win out in the future competition?
Since DVD was firstly invented by invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995, the optical storage technology has been developing rapidly. Recently HD DVD and Blu-ray has become the important role in the optical storage field. At the same time, 3D movie technology and 3D Blu-ray are also attracted much more attention. It is obvious that the blu-ray is the newly developed technology with promising future.
Blu-ray Disc is regarded as the next generation of optical storage medium in future. With the development of video and movie technology, the high definition video, 3D video or other data always comes into large scale. Especially in the movie industries, some movies need larger space to hold. Blu-ray disc fan fulfill these requirements very well, let’s get down to the detailed features of Blu-ray discs.
As a newly developed optical storage technology, Blu-ray has the following features:
- Massive storage capacity — Blu-ray Discs provides 25 GB capacity on single layer, 50 GB dual layer on single-sided disc.
- Allows high definition content – Blu-ray Discs is ready to hold high definition content and support high bitrate, the resolution can be up to 1980*1080. Most high definition movie are ready to made into Blu-ray discs.
- Compatible with CD and DVD – Blu-ray Discs has the same size and look with CD and DVD. Blu-ray Drive can read and write DVD well.
- Better data safety and protections – Blu-ray Discs enables Blu-ray copy protections to prevent the data being spreaded without permission.
- Rich interactivity capabilities with Java® — Provides widely supported content development platform that movie studios and gaming companies can use to provide creative interactive content for the next decade or more.
- Compatible with the latest playing devices. – Blu-ray Discs can be played back on many devices except the common BD players.
- Supported by Latest Movie Technology – Most 3D movies are made into Blu-ray discs, you can just play it on your 3D BD player and enjoy it. If you have a BD drive on your computer, just copy the content onto your computer, and then play it with a 3D player software.
However, compared with DVD, Blu-ray has the following disadvantages:
- Blu-ray is more expensive than DVD. You will need a BD player to play Blu-ray, it would cost you at least $200, and each Blu-ray Disc will cost you at least $20.
- Blu-ray doesn’t have so many titles compared with DVD. A Blu-ray Didsc has about 1000 titles currently, but DVD can have more than 90000 titles.
- Load time. If your Blu-ray disc is holding large scale content, it would take you more time to load the disc content compared with DVD.
- Blu-ray Discs cannot be played back on your standard DVD player. For example, if you have got BD player in your house, but a embedded DVD player on your car, you cannot enjoy this Blu-ray movie on your car.
Now let’s make a comparison with the two:
Blu-ray vs. DVD
| Feature | DVD | Blu-ray |
| Maximum native resolutions supported via HDMI | EDTV (480p) | HDTV (720p, 1080i, 1080p) |
| Disc capacity | 4.7GB (single layer) 8.5GB (dual layer) |
25GB (single layer) 50GB (dual layer) |
| Video capacity (per dual-layer disc) | SD: approximately 3 hours | SD: approximately 23 hours HD: 8.5 or 5.6 hours, depending on encoding method |
| Compatible video game consoles | PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox, Xbox 360 | PlayStation 3 |
| Player prices | $99 and less | $170+ for Profile 1.1 players $250+ for Profile 2.0 players $400 for PlayStation 3 |
| Movie prices | $6 and more (retail) | $20 to $28 (retail) |
| Number of titles available at the end of 2008 | 90,000-plus | about 1,000 |
| Set-top recorders available now | Yes | No |
| Copy protection/digital rights management | Macrovision, CSS | AACS, ICT, BD+, BD-ROM Mark |
| Region-coded discs and players | Yes | Yes |
(Data from Cnet.com)
We can learn something from the above comparison between Blu-ray & DVD. Blu-ray Disc has many advantages over DVDs especially in the disc capacity and video quality. Video quality and disc capacity is the currently increasing need for most people. Therefore, the drop of price for BD player has caused the double or triple purchasing. It is estimated that Blu-ray player devices shall take main market share in the next four or five years. This is the trend.
Currently you may meet the problems as described in the 4 th of disadvantages, maybe you have DVD player on your car, or other room. Luckily, this is no longer a problem. You may find many software that can help you to convert Blu-ray to DVD discs. With the development of computer technology, the computers shall have BD Rom installed instead of the current DVD Rom. Everything will become easy, you can play your Blu-ray discs easily on your PC. Or just copy the image file into USB, and then have it played on your other playing devices. Since the blocks of Blu-ray discs has been cleared, Blu-ray technology shall be the leader in the optical storage technology.