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The Blu-ray disc is a great invention of our time, as it allows the best high quality picture and sound to be played on compatible televisions. As of now, it is the only high definition disc on the market, but what’s the problem with that when it works so well?

The Blu-ray Disc Association is responsible for creating the Blu-ray standard. It is comprised of almost two hundred mega-corporations, all of which have a stake in Blu-ray’s success. They developed the format over a period of years before completing it in 2004.

The most important thing about the Blu-ray disc is its storage capacity. The amount of data a disc can hold establishes its capabilities, so the more you have, the better. A standard Blu-ray disc can hold 25GB of data.

Twenty five gigabytes is certainly a lot, but this number can be expanded upon greatly. This can be done by adding layers to the disc, so a dual-layer disc could hold 50MB. Currently it only goes up to two layers, but the Blu-ray Disc Association plans on adding more layers in the future.

The reason Blu-ray discs are so much more capable than DVDs is because of the laser they utilize. DVDs are read by a red laser, but Blu-rays are decoded through a shorter blue laser.

The current standard speed for Blu-ray discs is known as 1x. As movies become more defined, rates can be increased to 10x or 12x, but that is difficult to reach due to limitations in hardware.

Blu-ray can take a number of different forms, just like the computer form of a DVD is a CD, roughly. All discs share similarities, which enables some formats to be combined, such as a proposed Blu-ray and DVD disc, which could be played on either type of respective hardware. DVD is bound to become obsolete in the near future, so many people wonder what the point of making such a format would be.