TechnicaMag.com

In the year 1997 a revolutionary new technology brought music, video entertainment with high definition into the homes in the world and revolutionizing the entertainment industry and that was DVD. Now around after ten years of such an invention in 2006, yet another high definition and highly revolutionizing technology is getting common which is called the Blue-ray technology. Here in this invention discs are called the Blue-ray Discs (BD). These discs have very high storage capacity and can play high quantities of audio, video of high definition together with datas, photos and many varieties of digital contents.

Blue violet laser is used in the Blue-ray discs for reading the information as it has shorter wavelength of 405 nm. Single layered Blue ray discs can store 25 gigabytes which is 5 times more than the DVD ingle layered that can store 4.7 GB. If it is double layered BD it stores 50 GB that is 6 times more than the Double layered DVD can store. The advantages in this blue ray technology over the normal DVD is that user can jump to any point on the disc instantly. High Definition Television can be recorded without the loss of any Quality. User can enjoy recording one program while playing another program on that disc. Recorded program can be edited or reordered. Playlists can be created. Space in the disc can be automatically searched for avoiding overwriting.

In the blue ray discs the data is placed on top of the polycarbonate layer that is 1.1mm thick, this placing of data prevents the reading problems as birefringence is prevented. Outside of the disc is provided with hard coating to protect it from scratches and the fingerprints. Blue ray discs will not be expensive as the production cost of them is less. In a DVD the recorded layer is kept in between two 0.6mm thick discs and then they are molded, and this process requires to be done carefully to avoid birefringence. But for blue ray discs injection molding is done on a single 1.1mm disc. BDs transfer the data very fast with rate of 36 Mbps where as the DVDs transfer at 10 Mbps.

Now the argument is whether the BDs replace the DVDs, and the manufacturers of the BDs are very hopeful of that, and a company has already developed a Blu-ray/DVD combo disc with around 33.5 GB capacity. As BDs is strong competitor for the DVD there are other equivalent competitors coming for replacing of the DVDs like HD-DVD which is called as AOL (Advanced Optical Device) developed by Toshiba and NEC. But still the blu-ray technology has an edge when compared and next it will be the BDs instead of DVDs. But threat can be from the Pioneer’s featured technology disc that is said to be of 500 GB capacity and can blow out the hard discs in the systems, this technology is said to use direct ultra violet rays which have even very shorter wavelength than the Blue light.