Basically, Blu-Ray has become the new thing that has come to plague optical disk formats, and the craze over them. Following the popular DVD disc format, Blu-Ray stands to be the next development in optical storage media, boasting to have more storage space than regular DVD optical disc formats.
In further understanding just what is Blu-Ray, one has to have some understanding with what digital data storage means. Digital data is basically measured in megabytes, and is basically what makes up video, audio and other electronic programs or files for personal computers, or games for gaming consoles. The “old-school” CD format is capable of storing up to 700 megabytes of data. Its following, in the form of DVD, is capable of storing up to 4.7 gigabytes of data, with dual-layer formats capable of storing up to 8.5 gigabytes of data.
Blu-ray is capable of storing up to 25 gigabytes of data, while dual-layer formats of it could store twice that, at 50 gigabytes. If you go around asking what is Blu-Ray, you are sure to get answers like it is basically DVD, only with bigger data storage capacities. It is named as such because of the blue colored laser which is utilized in its optical reading/writing function. CDs and DVDs utilize a red colored laser. This difference in color stands as the major difference between the optical storage formats, aside from Blu-Ray’s impressive data storage capacities.
Basically, Blu-Ray Discs could house up to five DVD’s, which is truly quite something. It is named as such because of the blue laser utilized in reading the media. DVDs and CDs utilize red colored laser, and stands to be the major difference between Blu-Ray and them, aside from the possible storage capacities which Blu-Ray could store.
Blu Ray technology utilizes a blue colored laser, thus its name, and thus the common mistake of referring to it as “Blue Ray Technology”, misspelling it with an extra e. DVDs and CDs utilize a red colored laser, different from Blu Ray, as the blue hued light has a shorter wavelength, allowing Blu Ray Technology to read optical data with greater precision. As earlier mentioned, Blu Ray is basically the next thing after DVD, with more storage space capacity features, as well as read/write speed.
To further supply an answer to one’s what is blu-ray inquiry, Blu-Ray specifications indicate that at its base speed, or 1x, the technology could read/write data in 36Mb per second. As a standard, BD-ROMs are made to work within a 2x speed, as movies stored in a BD-ROM require a 54MB per second read speed.
