A Blu-ray is one of the two major High Definition disc formats (see HD-DVD, below) that are vying to replace the current DVD standard in the U.S. market.
Blu-ray is supported on the hardware side by Hitachi, LG (also supports HD-DVD), Matsushita (Panasonic), Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, HP, Dell, Apple, TDK, and Thomson (Note: Thomson also supports HD-DVD). On the software side, Blu-ray is supported by Sony/Columbia, Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, MGM, Paramount (also supports HD-DVD) and Warner (also supports HD-DVD). Apple Computer has also announced support for Blu-ray.
The BD-ROM discs support MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC High Profile and VC-1 video codecs, which allows Blu-ray discs store up to four hours of video per layer. For audio it supports PCM, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS, DTS-HD and Dolby Lossless formats. MPEG-2 TS has been incorporated to allow direct recording from HDTV broadcasts without picture quality loss.
BD-RE and BD-R will be backwards compatible to MPEG-2. New codecs will be introduced and supported as they evolve over time. The technology will also include Java cross platform software for interactive menus on the discs. This may also incorporate network connectivity enabling updates via the internet of the Blu-ray technology.
The baseline data transfer rate of the Blu-ray technology is currently 36Mbps. 2x speed prototypes are in development with the intention of going up to 8x in the future. The numerical aperture used, 0.85, allows higher speeds. It also means that BDs require less recording power and lower disc rotation speeds to achieve the same data transfer rates as DVDs and HD DVDs.
Many manufacturers are starting to produce Blu-ray products. They are incorporating them into stand-alone recorders, game consoles, laptops, and PCs. As such, optical heads have been created that can read CDs, DVDs and BDs. Panasonic released the first drive to support this, the SW-5582, and Pioneer has announced their drive will be released during the first quarter this year.
