Blu-ray vs HD-DVD - Essay Example

Blu-ray Vs HD-DVD The last century in general and the last couple of decades in particular have seen rapid advancements in the filed of communication, broadcasting and computing. The Electronics, communication and IT industries are the main source of this technological revolution taking place around the globe. Starting from the vacuum tubes, transistors, ICs we are today talking about smart chips. Similarly the data storages devices have undergone sea change during these years. The spool tapes, long play records have given way to the latest techniques pioneered by the likes of Blu-ray and DVD. DVD or 'Digital Versatile Disc' or 'Digital Video Disc' has been round the corner for quite a while now, but Blu-ray is a relatively newer technique. With the arrival of every new technique, a debate starts taking place whether the immediate predecessor has lived its useful life or not. Similar debate is taking place in the IT industry with arrival of Blu-ray storage device. Advanced version of DVD is known as HD-DVD. This High Definition DVD or High Density DVD has more storage than a normal DVD. But with the arrival of Blu-ray question marks are being raised on its useful life as well. In fact there's lot more to these types of debates, other than technological issues. Now in the market driven economies, the newer versions of any product/ technology are being patronized by some big corporate house, therefore industrial rivalry takes a central stage on such matters. Similar is the case of Blu-ray Vs HD-DVD. Blu-ray technology developed by Sony and others has started gathering support from companies like Phillips, while Toshiba is going ahead with newer experiments in the HD-DVD series. As always happens consumer happens to be the ultimate beneficiary of this cutthroat competition. In fact the speed of change in technology is so fast and furious that while on the one hand the HD-DVD, introduced in 1997, is still being experimented with for more storage, the Blue-ray Disc (BD) has arrived with a bang. Which way to go The name Blu-ray is in fact a combination of 'blue', for the color of the laser that is used, and 'ray', for the optical ray. It is worthwhile here to mention that the earlier disc recorders, readers use red laser ray. The letter "e" in "blue" was purposefully left off, according to the group of manufacturers, as an everyday word cannot be trademarked, thus Blu-ray was born. Blu-ray Disc (BD), a next-generation optical disc format is jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). This format too will support enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD) besides storing large amounts of data. There are basically three types of Blu-ray formats planned: i. BD-ROM for pre-recorded media such as software, games and movies ii. BD-R (recordable) for HDTV recording and PC data storage iii. BD-RE (rewritable) for HDTV recording and PC data storage Some of the distinctive features of Blu-ray are; This format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. That implies more than two hours of high-definition video or about 13 hours of standard video on a single sided BD while enough to hold about 4.5 hours of high-definition video or more than 20 hours of standard video on a double sided BD. BD can record high-definition television (HDTV) without any quality loss The listener/user can instantly skip to any spot on the disc Most interesting feature of this format is that we can record one program while watching another on the disc We can create playlists for quick access to our preferred data bank We an also edit or reorder programs recorded on the Blu-ray disc A BD automatically search for an empty space on the disc to avoid recording over a program. BD uses blue ray laser to read and write data while the DVD readers and writers use red laser ray. The blue light has a shorter wavelength as compared to red light, which means it is possible for blu-ray to focus the laser spot on the disc surface with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly and stored in less space. This makes it possible to fit more data on the disc even though it's the same size as a CD/DVD. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible with red laser CDs and DVDs by using the BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup unit. The list of blu-ray supporters is growing rapidly with more than 170 of the world's leading consumer electronics, recording media, personal computer, video game and music companies supporting the newer transparent disc. Some of the leading movie studios like Disney, Paramount, Fox, Warner, Sony, Lionsgate and MGM have also announced their support for this format. These studios have already started releasing some of their latest movies in BD format, while promising that future releases will be entirely based on this format. Blu-ray discs promise to be more interactive than HD-DVD as users will now be able to connect to the Internet and instantly download subtitles and other interactive movie features. The design of the Blu-ray discs saves some amount of manufacturing costs. Traditional DVDs are built by injection molding the two 0.6-mm discs between which the recording layer is sandwiched. Blu-ray discs only do the injection-molding process on a single 1.1-mm disc, which reduces cost. Stuck up in this debate of BD vs DVD, some of the communication companies have also started coming out with technologies supportive of both technologies, as BD is quite costly as of now, while DVD is still very popular amongst the masses in general. Ricoh1 recently announced that it has developed an optical component that reads and writes all disk formats, including Blu-ray disc and HD-DVD, as well as DVD and CD, with one pickup and one objective lens. Based on the disc information, the optical diffraction component would adjust the laser beam with its diffraction grating for each format and pass the information to the objective lens. The lens would then form a beam spot at the appropriate depth for each disk format. This device promises to give shape to a new era of competition in communication & IT gadgets and is destined to pave the way for multi-format players and recorders. If we go simply by the technological edge then BD can easily push off the old war horse HD-DVD. But, a general consumer decides to buy his/ her gadgets depending upon the cost factor as well. Today, while market is full of HD-DVD gadgets, which implies more competition and lesser price. Therefore a good quality gadget is available at reasonable in the market in the form of HD-DVD. On the other hand Blu-ray will take a while before penetrating the common market place. As of now BD could be more attractive for Hollywood studios, as they need plenty of storage space, while the needs of a common user are more than fulfilled by the big space disks in the form of HD-DVD. Blu-ray Disc (BD) is, no doubt, one of the next-generation optical disc formats currently being proposed. But we must not forget that HD-DVD has been recognized as the only format of approved next-generation technology by the DVD Forum, which is a group of 230 companies who develop and define DVD formats. References: 1. Stephanie Watson, How Blu-ray Discs Work, http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/blu-ray.htm 2. Blu-ray Disc, http://www.blu-ray.com/info/ 3. Broadcast Engineering, http://broadcastengineering.com 4. Julio Franco H., Blu-ray vs. HD DVD: The Format Wars, available online at http://www.techspot.com/articles/blu-ray_vs_hddvd/ Read More