Blu-Ray Disc

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of its next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of world leader electronics, personal computers and the media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson).

The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD) as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB.

Blu-ray is the next generation of digital video disc. It can record, store and play back high-definition video and digital audio and computer data. The advantage of Blu-ray is the large amount of information it can hold:

A single-layer Blu-ray, which is roughly the same size as a DVD can hold up to 27 gigabytes of data - which represents more than two hours of high-definition video, or about 13 hours of standard video .

A double-layer Blu-ray can store up to 50 GB, which helps hold approximately 4.5 hours of high-definition video or more than 20 hours of standard video. And there are even plans in the works to develop a disk with twice that amount of storage.
Source: White Paper: Blu-ray Disc Format
We invite you to learn more about the differences between Blu-ray and DVD in the next section.

Blu-ray is going to replace the previous DVD? Its manufacturers hoped. Meanwhile, JVC has developed a disc Blu-ray/DVD combo with an approximate 33.5-GB capacity, allowing the release of the video in two formats on a single disc. But Blu-ray is not alone in the market. Some other formats are competing for a share of the DVD market.
The other big player is HD-DVD, also called AOD (Advanced Optical Disc), which was developed by electronics giants Toshiba and NEC. HD-DVD was made in the work before the regular DVD, but it did not start real development until 2003.

The advantage of HD-DVD is that it uses the same format as traditional DVDs, and can therefore be manufactured with the same equipment, cost savings. HD-DVD is equivalent to the storage capacity of Blu-ray. A rewritable, single-layer HD-DVD can hold 15 gigabytes of data, double-layer disc can hold 30 GB and a triple-layer disc can hold 45 GB (that is, compared with 27 GB and 50 GB for the Blu - Ray). The read-only versions hold less data. Also, HD-DVD offers the interactive capabilities of Blu-ray, with HDi. (*)