What's blu-ray?

Question

What's a bluray disc and what's so great about it?

can i use them with my existing player?

Answer 1

Blu-Ray is Sony's High Definition DVD system

HD-DVD is Microsoft's HD DVD system....

Both are great, both are Different HD formats....

Remember the war between VHS and Betamax back in the 70's and 80's?

VHS won because they gave the technology away free of charge...Sony Betamax was MUCH better technology, but they didn't give it away FREE....

Now that Sony OWNs several different movie companies...that may affect the final outcome....

The ONLY thing to watch for is HOW MANY companies are aligning themselves with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD......That will take years, so just look at your favorite old movies and see which technology it is recorded in.

I'm going to wait....I really didn't see any movies that impressed me yet.... give it 5 years if you can.....

Answer 2

Blue Ray is a new system of reading CD and DVD discs that uses a blue laser where the current system uses red laser.
The advantage is that the system is capable of storing and reading High Definition TV signals and is also what is used in the new Playstation-3 to produce high definition graphics.
A red laser system can't come close to the picture quality of a blue laser
The system has a competitor called HD-DVD..
Although the Blue Ray is superior, it is expensive to manufacture, wheras the HD-DVD format can be made using existing equipment.

Answer 3

Blue-Ray is Sony's entry into the next generation DVD market. As the name indicates, it uses a blue laser to read data (As opposed to the red laser in conventional DVDs). Hitachi is behind Blue-Ray's main competitor, the HD-DVD. Both formats display content in the highest available resolution (referred to as 1080p), and also offer more interactive and special features due the advanced storage. Technology-wise Blue-Ray has more storage capacity than HD-DVD, meaning (in theory) they will be able to offer more special features and/or keep longer movies to a single disc. As you may surmised from reading this - to view a Blue-Ray disc you need 1.) - a Blue-Ray player (You cannot play Blue-Ray or HD-DVD discs on a conventional DVD player) and 2.) - An HDTV capable of displaying 1080p resolution in order to take full advantage of the technology.

In my own personal opinion, I think both Blue-Ray and HD-DVD are a complete waste of money. This Slate article sums it up pretty well:

http://www.slate.com/id/2153877/

I would add that to realize the true benefit of this medium - you need a 1080p HD Television, which right now are priced significantly higher than their lower resolution (but still High Definition) counterparts - the 720p resolution models. Again - in my opinion, the higher price is simply not justified at this time. Especially when you consider that outside of Blue-Ray & HD-DVD, there is NO media to watch at that high a resolution! (The best TV broadcasts now are in 1080i - which is better than 720p but not the full quality of 1080p). So if you intend watch actual television on your HD TV, you won't be able to (right now) realize its full potential.

Also - there aren't many choices available now with either format - they are mostly limited to new movies. Meaning, if you want to pick up Season One of Lost or watch Ahhnold in Total Recall, you won't be able to find them in either Blue-Ray or HD-DVD format.

Anyway - hope this answers your question. As you can see I've been researching all this new technology for quite some time. There's a lot of exciting stuff out there but unfortunately most of it remains outside the reach of the average consumer.

Answer 4

nlu ray can store 50GB worth of data onwards.... sony launched it... can show HD images... which is the next generation....

and nope, u cant use it on ur current player... u will have to buy a blu ray player separelty...