Blu Ray Technology!!

Blu Ray Technology

It was day after my cousin's wedding ceremony got over. Everyone at home was very tired taking care of all arrangements on the day before. It was the day for relatives staying far from the native to say good bye and get back to their work stations. My uncle and aunt were busy seeing off my relatives till noon and could join us only by lunch time. The lively presence of family members added flavor to the tasty lunch that was served. Wondering what my cousin marriage has got to do with Blu Ray technology? Well, keep reading and we'll get there in no more time.

After lunch, youngistan conveyed uncle about their wish to watch a movie. And the poll for choosing the movie started. Granny with a blushing smile made her choice first, any of the Dr.Rajkumar's movies (Kannada). My little kiddo niece was the next to speak with the cartoon flick Ice Age being her choice. Mama, the muscular man in the family was flexing his muscles to watch any of Sallu bhai's flicks. Before I could speak out my choice, aunt interrupted asking us to check first if all those CDs are available at CD rental store.

My lil nephew traveling at speed slightly lesser than that of light was back in no time with "Rab Ne Banadi Jodi” DVD saying” That’s the latest movie they have got at store, it being a Sunday”. The disappointed smiles dint last long and the crowd was back into the mood as they gathered in the hall for the movie screening. My niece started humming title song as the titles started. Hardly 10 mins into the movie and everyone was frustrated with the clarity of it already. My nephew was sent back to CD rental store to replace it. Instead of taking it back, the CD store owner, a good friend of my uncle sent back a new DVD player saying that the same CD would play well in that player. And so right was he. The clarity was better indeed.

As everybody was enjoying the movie, I was amused thinking why our new CD player could not accomplish the same job. After the movie got over, my nephew started shooting many questions to his mom.
"Why the player from CD rental store did a better job than our CD player though ours was a new one?"
My sister looked at me for answering his queries. And with the little knowledge he had, the software engineer in me took a guess.

Showing something written on the player "Blu Ray" I told him, "it’s the latest technology in the market”. But he was not convinced with my answer and continued to grill me “what is Blu Ray technology? And how does it work?” etc.

I dint have answers to his questions at that point of time but later did some "googleing" to find them and wanted to share my findings with you guys. The Blu-ray players coming out will support upscaling of DVDs to 1080p/1080i, so our existing DVD collection will look even better than before.


Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format 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). 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 on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM rely on a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible with CDs and DVDs through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup unit. The benefit of using a blue-violet laser (405nm) is that it has a shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm), which makes it possible to focus the laser spot with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly and stored in less space, so it's possible to fit more data on the disc even though it's the same size as a CD/DVD. This together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 is what enables Blu-ray Discs to hold 25GB/50GB. Recent development by Pioneer has pushed the storage capacity to 500GB on a single disc by using 20 layers.

Blu-ray is currently supported by about 200 of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer, recording media, video game and music companies. The format also has support from all Hollywood studios and countless smaller studios as a successor to today's DVD format. Many studios have also announced that they will begin releasing new feature films on Blu-ray Disc day-and-date with DVD, as well as a continuous slate of catalog titles every month.

So tomorrow if someone asks you in another occasion, you as a software engineer will have the answers ready. Do share your thoughts and ideas on how you felt walking through this learning.

For more information about Blu-ray, please see http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/