Links
Blu-Ray - Rent film online, 17 December 2008
For those of you still a little confused by this whole Blu-Ray thing, I will try to explain!
First, a history lesson! Back in 1998 High Definition televisions began to appear. At the time however, there was no cheap way to play HD content until a guy called Shuji Nakamura invented blue laser diodes.
The blue laser produced from these diodes has a shorter wavelength than the standard red laser used with DVDs, which allowed a lot more data to be written to a disc. Sony then took this concept and ultimately turned it into Blu-Ray. However, they were not alone. Toshiba also had a very similar idea and proceeded to launch HD-DVD to rival Blu-Ray.
disc has a slightly tighter track pitch (the information
spiralling round the disc, similar to a vinyl record) which
means it can hold more information on the same disc with
the same wavelength laser. In fact Blu-Ray discs offer
more than 5 times the capacity (25GB) of a standard
DVD Disc or 10 times (50GB) for a dual layer disc with
the dimensions remaining the same as a standard DVD
or CD. HD-DVD is more like 15GB for a single layer.
The first BD-ROM players were shipped in the middle of June 2006, though HD DVD players beat them in the race to the market by a few months. As mentioned, HD-DVD had a head start and Blu-Ray disc sales were slow at first. The very first Blu-Ray players were perceived as expensive and buggy. The turning point was when Sony released its Playstation 3 with a built in Blu-ray player. By January 2007, Blu-Ray had outsold HD-DVD.
The war between the two formats went on until February 2008 when Toshiba finally announced that it would no longer be developing HD-DVD players and recorders. Almost immediately all other HD-DVD companies followed suit, ending the format war. The Playstation 3 acted as a catalyst for Blu-Ray and who knows, had it not been released when it was maybe HD-DVD would have would have come out on top.
After the end of the war Blu-Ray began making real progress. In fact it was, and still is, being adopted faster than DVDs were at the same period of development. Now, as of December 2008 more than 1200 Blu-Ray titles have been released
The first Blu-Ray discs had a major flaw. Because the layer on which the data is written is closer to the surface of the disc, any scratches to the surface were a big problem. To counter the problem, Blu-Rays were originally housed in cartridges. A few months later, TDK came out with a scratch resistant coating called Durabis. Sony then went on to make their own, which is what most Blu-Rays are coated with today, rendering them very resistant to scratches.
The first Blu-Ray discs had a major flaw. Because the layer on which the data is written is closer to the surface of the disc, any scratches to the surface were a big problem. To counter the problem, Blu-Rays were originally housed in cartridges. A few months later, TDK came out with a scratch resistant coating called Durabis. Sony then went on to make their own, which is what most Blu-Rays are coated with today, rendering them very resistant to scratches.