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 on your notebook computer, to be able to replace your diehard DVD drive with a Blu-ray combo drive, but these drives don’t take full advantage of what Blu-ray truly has to offer – recordability.

Recordable Blu-Ray – BD-R

Just as DVD initially became available as a medium for distributing video (and, before that, CD was used to distribute high quality audio), Blu-ray also came out primarily as a video distribution medium. The developers of the standard realized that the uses of Blu-ray would far exceed the initial use – and that Blu-ray would have the potential of becoming a medium for storing and distributing data.

The same technologies that made it possible to deliver high-definition movies, with multiple languages, and multiple audio channels, all on a single plastic disc also made it possible to record huge (by today’s optical disc standards) amounts of data onto a single Blu-ray disc. That ‘huge’ amount today is 25GB for a single layer recordable disc, and 50 GB on a double layer disc.

Perhaps the most popular version – probably because of a somewhat lower price – is the single layer 25 GB disc. Versions are available at different recording speeds – ranging from 1X up to 6X at the time of this writing. If history is any teacher, 8X and higher media should be available soon.

Blu-ray recorders are available, and can read and write the 25GB discs. Before buying a drive, it may be worthwhile to confirm the maximum read and write speeds of the drives you are considering.  Decks having the ability to write to basic BD-R or BD-ROM discs are often called BD-R, BD-Recorders, BD-Writers, or similar names that indicate that they can read and write to BD-R media.  (There are a few other types of media, which will be covered in the next installment of this series).

The 50 GB, dual layer version, obviously holds about twice as much data as a 25 GB disc. Again, if you plan to use a Blu-ray recorder to read and write dual layer 50 GB discs, you should make sure that your drive supports dual layer.  It seems that most (if not all) BD-R drives also support the dual layer media.  However, it is prudent, before buying a drive, to confirm that your drive has these capabilities.

Next Installment — moving away from Alphabet Soup to BD-E, BD-RW and some new drive technologies