A colleague told me how being able to store 40 gigabytes of data on a single medium helped save a large project.   He was asked, last minute, to bring the screener for a movie to a movie theater for a preview.  The movie was digitized, and was designed to be projected using a digital projector that read the data and projected it, at film quality resolutions, onto the movie screen.

He drove his backup copy of the movie from San Diego to Santa Barbara, a drive that takes four to five hours.  Meanwhile, at the theater, the coordinators of the preview were in a panic.  The hard drive that stored the movie had crashed.  They weren’t able to bring it back, and may have to cancel the special screening.

They hadn’t figured on my colleague.  He arrived an hour or so before the screening was scheduled to be projected.  The data on my colleague’s Blu-ray disk contained the entire film, in a format that contained more data than a typical Blu-ray movie.  Although the projector wasn’t able to read the data on the Blu-ray disc he brought, using the notebook computer Read the rest of this entry »

Tapping into some of the underappreciated strengths of Blu-ray

As a storage medium, the Blu-ray disc appears to be riding an acceptance curve similar to the one of its predecessors – CD and DVD media.  When the CD first came out, in the 1980s, it was seen as a format for distributing audio files. The use of the CD as one for distribution of programs and data took years to develop.  At the end of the 1980s, CD-Recorders sold for around $2000, and a 700 megabyte blank disk cost $10 or more.  Successfully recording a usable CD-R disc was not a foregone conclusion – so the cost of creating ONE usable disc may have run closer to $20, $30 or more dollars.    Today, of course, CD-recordability is built into the DVD drives in most computers, or into aftermarket drives that may cost as little as $20.  And blank CD media costs just pennies.

The DVD followed a similar path, with the medium used initially for distribution of video.  However, the industry was aware of the potential for using the medium for data storage.  It still took some time for the recorders to become affordable, and for the cost of blank media to become Read the rest of this entry »

RECAP

In previous posts, we explored the many different alphabetic designations that could apply to Blu-ray discs and the drives that could read, read and write to them.  We looked at BD-ROM, Combo Drives, BD-R and BD-RW, and looked at the many different types of erasable media (and drives) available.  We looked at single layer (25 GB) and double layer (50 GB) media, at write once and at erasable discs.

The last post looked at some of the proposed formats for the future, which expanded from single and double layer up to 4 layer (100 GB) and beyond — all the way up to 128 GB.  We looked at some of the uses of these larger (by 2010 standards) discs, and explained that this new standard may require new hardware to read and write to the new discs.   And we hinted at yet another proposed standard – the IH-BD disc.

IH-BD – our last acronym (for now)

The Intra-hybrid Blu-ray disc puts a new twist on the double layer Read the rest of this entry »

The first three parts of this series explored the different types of Blu-ray drives for use in computers (and some game systems).  We looked at the basic Blu-ray disk readers (BD-ROM), that were capable of playing Blu-ray discs, and probably also capable of reading data recorded onto Blu-ray discs.  We also looked at the ‘combo’ drives that not only had the ability to read Blu-ray discs, but also could record DVDs and CDs.

Next, we looked at the Blu-ray Disc recorders (BD-R) drives.  These drives could read and write data onto single layer (25 GB capacity) and double layer (50 GB capacity) media.  An important aspect to the capability of recording data onto Blu-ray media was that you can store large amounts of data (and, of course, not just data, but audio, video, and other content) onto a single disc.  Of course, a BD-R drive could also read and write to DVD and CD media, making a BD-R drive a useful replacement for the older DVD-R (DVD-R and DVD+R) drives — and immensely important if you want to get the most amount of data onto the fewest number of discs.

Part Three took the story a bit further, introducing the Erasable or Re-Writable capabilities (BD-RW, BD-RE).  Erasability (or re-writability) provided the option for reusing Read the rest of this entry »

In the first two parts of this ongoing series I explored a few of the ways Blu-ray has been implemented into computers. The first installment discussed Blu-ray readers that would allow you to view Blu-ray movies and also (probably) read DVDs and CDs. The ‘combo’ drive also let you record DVDs and CDs, in addition to just reading Blu-ray discs.

In Part Two of this series, I wrote about recordable Blu-ray – the rather remarkable technologies that let you store as much as 50 GIGABYTES of data onto a single disc. I discussed how single layer Blu-ray discs (BD-R) can store as much as 25 GB of data, while their dual layer (BD-RDL) siblings can store up to twice as much data. It’s not clear whether all recorders (or even Blu-ray readers) can read the second layer of a dual layer disc; or whether a recorder that can write to BD-R media can also write to BD-RDL.

There’s another twist to the Blu-ray story – Blu-ray rewritable (RE – Recordable/Erasable). Rewritable media has been around for more than a decade – with CD-RW, DVD-RW, and now Blu-ray RE. RW technologies, in the past, don’t seem to have been particularly successful – except with those Read the rest of this entry »

Intro

In Part One of this series , I looked at some of the basic ‘Blu-ray’ drives that can be added to a computer or used as external drives. These included the basic players – whose sole function is to play Blu-ray discs (and, possibly, to read data recorded onto a Blu-ray disc), and the so-called ‘Combo’ drives that, in addition to playing Blu-ray discs can also read and write to DVD and CD drives.

Being able to watch a Blu-ray movie on your high resolution desktop or notebook computer is nice to have. In most cases, you’re sitting closer to the screen than you would be if you were playing the same video on a high-def television, and the fine items on the screen look even better. (You may lose the surround sound that a good home theater system can deliver if you use your computer, although it’s also possible to take advantage of the surround sound processing on many computers and feed the sound to multiple speakers arranged for surround sound.)

It’s a good thing, if your computer is short of slots, or you’ve run out of USB ports Read the rest of this entry »

I went to my local nerdy electronics store a few days ago and was slightly dazzled by the many options a person can have if he or she wanted to install a Blu-ray drive into a home or office computer.  (Even the term ‘Blu-ray drive’ is one that lacks a single definition.)

The basic drive is one that is similar to the one used in home entertainment sysems — it does ONE thing, and should do it well.  That one thing, of course, is ‘playing’, or ‘reading’ the discs put into the drive.  These discs don’t necessarily have to be Blu-ray videos or games – the drives should be able to also read DVDs and CDs.  It should be able to read discs that you get commercially, like a game or movie, and also those that have been created with a DVD or CD or Blu-ray recorder.   This type of drive, with no settings for anything other than reading a disc, is the basic type of Blu-ray drive you can buy.  A drive of this type often goes by the name BD-ROM.  No recording media (BD-R or other) is supported by a BD-ROM drive.

A Combo drive adds functionality (and cost) and goes beyond the basic Blu-ray drive.   In addition to handling the reading tasks, a Combo drive is also capable of recording onto Read the rest of this entry »

This is the first blog for Blu-raydisc.org.  Let’s make it clear at this point that we are neither associated with or endorsed by the Blu-raydisc Association.  This lack of association enables us to fully explore the best – and worst – that Blu-ray has to offer.  Because we are independent, we will be an independent, honest voice for the consumer.

Our goal is to provide useful, accurate and timely information about everything Blu-ray.  This not only includes the latest Blu-ray players, or the hottest new Blu-ray titles, but also to explore the emerging use of Blu-ray recordable discs for media storage and distribution.  Did you know, for example, that you can record up to 25 GB (that’s gigabytes) of data on a single Blu-ray disc?   This is more than five times the capacity of the standard recordable DVD.

Did you know that there is already equipment available for making multiple duplicates of these monstrous data discs.  We’ll be looking at the uses of Blu-ray for data, in addition to the beauties of Blu-ray for watching photographic quality, high definition movies with Read the rest of this entry »