What is the difference between blu-ray disk and just a regular disk?

Question

Its on different dvds.

Answer 1

Blu-ray and HD-DVD hold more data. That's it. Nothing more. They do this by recording the data tracks closer together. This requires a different laser and drive mechanism as compared to DVD or CD. They're also incompatible with one another, so a Blu-Ray disc won't play in a HD-DVD player... However, both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players are backwards compatible with DVD and CD.

Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs are used to hold movies in HD. Their larger capacity allows you to fit an entire movie in HD on a single disc, whereas you'd need as many as 4 DVDs, maybe even more.

Answer 2

It's a bit more complex than that.

Yes, BluRay is a high-def DVD. But Sony did a somewhat clever thing. Every disk is a Java program. The BluRay players are actually computers - kind of like a game system. When you put a BluRay disk into a player, it actually runs the Java program on the disk to bring up the menu system, show previews, let you jump to chapters in a movie, etc.

At the moment - this makes the bluray players kind of slow and there have been some problems because each disk is like a new software program. But eventually - they could come up with features on BluRay DVD's that go way beyond simply watching a movie.

Answer 3

Simply put, Blu-ray disks are for high definition playback where as regular disks are only standard definition playback.

Blu-ray supports up to 1080 lines resolution whereas regular disks only support 576 (PAL format) or 480 (NTSC format).

Therefore you getter a better picture on a HD capable flat panel display when connected to a blu-ray player than on a standard player.