Blu-Ray and HD DVD

This is a format I have been watching with great interest.

This is a step in the right direction, if for no other reason than the ability to supply HD DVD to the masses. My Sony player was not expensive, so hopefully I won't get killed when I go to Blue-ray.

QUESTIONS and ANSWERS:

Who developed Blu-ray?

The Blu-ray Disc format was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of leading consumer electronics and PC companies with more than 100 members from all over the world. The Board of Directors currently consists of:

Apple Computer, Inc.
Dell Inc.
Hewlett Packard Company
Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
TDK Corporation
Thomson Multimedia
Twentieth Century Fox
Walt Disney Pictures

What Blu-ray formats are planned?

As with conventional CDs and DVDs, Blu-ray plans to provide a wide range of formats including ROM/R/RW. The following formats are part of the Blu-ray Disc specification:

BD-ROM - read-only format for software, games and movie distribution.
BD-R - recordable format for HDTV recording and PC data storage.
BD-RE - rewritable format for HDTV recording and PC data storage.

How much data can you fit on a Blu-ray Disc?

A single-layer disc can fit 23.3GB, 25GB or 27GB.
A dual-layer disc can fit 46.6GB, 50GB or 54GB.

To ensure that the Blu-ray Disc format is easily extendable (future-proof) it also includes support for multi-layer discs, which should allow the storage capacity to be increased to 100GB-200GB (25GB per layer) in the future simply by adding more layers to the discs.

How much video can you record on a Blu-ray Disc?

Over 2 hours of high-definition television (HDTV) on a 25GB disc.
About 13 hours of standard-definition television (SDTV) on a 25GB disc.

My take is this will work. It is almost unprecedented for that many big names in the electronics world to agree on a single format. I think others have joined since this announcement and now includes Texas Instruments.

Looks very promising.

Thank for the info Albert. I had read about this a couple years ago, but forgot the specifics.

Brue raser is better than red raser.

Great info Albert and nice comedic touch "Gumby" : ) Sean
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The blue laser has a shorter wave than the red allowing for a far more precise reading, but as promising as it is blu-ray is not over the line yet...just because it's superior to the HD-DVD it also requires complete factory re-tooling whereas the (red) HD-DVD requires only partial re-tool (not the only reason), I read this format war was likley to be decided by Hollywood but last year Disney came out and will be backing Blu-Ray while Warner (?) or some other major studio(s) would be backing HD-DVD.
If anyone is interested to learn more or see a few players blu-ray.com has all the info you could want.

Actually, blu-ray was co-developed by the Blue Man Group and the Smurfs once in a blue moon ;^)