Movies are finally ready to take advantage of the High Definition displays that have been in stores for years. DVDs brought us great picture and sound that created a boom in the television and home theater market. Display technology rapidly grew to bring us a picture that was twice as good as DVD quality video. The problem was that DVDs cannot store enough information to fit HD quality video and sound, until now. New technology has created a DVD that can store up to five times more information than before. This new technology comes in two formats called Blu-Ray and HD DVD. These two formats were created separately and they currently in competition with each other. They both use similar technology to bring HD quality video and sound, but they do have some differences. The technology behind the two formats is based on the same optical technique that regular DVDs use. A laser is focused onto the surface of the disc and reads the digital information that is converted to video and sound. Blu-Ray and HD DVD incorporate a new colored laser that can be focused more precisely onto a smaller area of the disc. This allows there to be more information packed onto the same size disc. It's like a record player using a smaller needle and lines are just moved together tighter towards the center, leaving more room on the outside for more information. The reason for having to fit the information onto the same size disc as a DVD is so that all optical discs created with older technologies will fit into the same reader. So a Blu-Ray or HD DVD player will play CD, DVD and their own discs. Because of their competition there are no players that will play Blu-Ray and HD DVD. The main difference between the two formats is simply a matter of storage. HD DVDs can store 15GB; about three times as much as a DVD. A Blu-Ray disc can store 25GB which is about five times as much as a DVD. Both will have the same video resolution as of right now, but Blu-Ray has the potential to store better video when it is available. For now, extra space is used for movie extras like behind the scenes segments. Only time will tell if these formats will merge or fight it out to the end. History has shown us that one format usually prevails. |
