Back in 1997, a new home video format was introduced that utilised digital sound and video to provide the sharpest images and clearest sounds to homes across the world. The format was called the Digital Video Disc, or DVD, and it has since unseated VHS as the leading home video format all over the world.
DVD seems to be on its way out, however. Just like the large analog VHS tapes before them, DVDs are on the verge of being made obsolete by a relatively new format: Blu-ray.
Blu-ray players and discs were released in June 2006, although they were beaten to the market by HD-DVDs by a few months. Both formats were created to keep up with recently-released high-definition TVs such as Samsung televisions, which provided pictures and sound that were sharper than what standard DVDs were capable of providing. Although B-ray initially faced competition from HD-DVD, B-ray won the "format war" in 2008 when HD-DVD players and discs were pulled from the market.
Blu-ray gets its name from the blue-violet laser that is used to read the discs. The standard DVD player uses a red laser which has a much longer wavelength than blue/violet light. The shorter wavelength of a B-ray laser allows B-r discs to store almost ten times as much information as a standard DVD. Most single-sided DVDs can hold 4.7 GB (gigabytes) of information, which is about the size of a standard-definition two-hour movie with special features. A single-sided B-r disc, on the other hand, can hold 27 GB of data. This is enough for more than two hours of high-definition video or thirteen hours of standard-definition video. A double-layer Blu-ray disc can hold 54 GB of data, which is good for over 20 hours of standard definition video and 4.5 hours of high-definition video. There are currently plans to develop discs with an even higher capacity than that.
While the first Blu-ray players on the market were relatively expensive, their growing popularity and the fact that they are quickly overtaking DVD players on the market has made them more readily available and affordable. High-definition TVs have also grown in popularity, making B-ray players the ideal choice for those who want to enjoy the best movies with the best possible picture and sound quality. B-ray has even started to replace DVD-ROMs in computers as well as DVD recorders. The most advanced computers on the market now come with B-ray drives. For those who want to record their favourite shows on their high-definition TVs there are even now B-ray recorders such as the Panasonic B-ray Recorder on the market now.
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