Going high definition was high on our Christmas lists this year as sales as reputation of the Blu-Ray movies rocketed through the roof. In all honesty, I hadn’t seen what a Blu-Ray was capable of until I had looked at one my friend had purchased. When I saw the quality and clarity a Blu-Ray disc could produce I was amazed. It is absolutely crazy. I can only say that it looks so real you feel as though you can put your arm into the screen. It is better than anything I have seen before.
According to figures that were released by the British Video Association (BVA), sales on the Blu-Ray disc were up four hundred percent on the same period compared to the year before, with 1.5 million titles shifted in December alone. The lead selling Blu-Ray movie was ‘Dark Knight’ starring the late Heath Ledger and Cristian Bale. Everyone knows that to introduce a new video player of any sort is no easy task, getting everyone to own one of the Blu-Ray players is the key. They have to be affordable and the benefits have to be clear. There have been a few developments in recent years after the DVD that have not caught on, one of them being the ‘HD DVD’ and the ‘Mini DVD’ which is practically un-heard of. Yet, the Blu-Ray disc is something different. It offers something that other films have never offered before and that is un-paralleled quality and detail. When you watch a Blu-Ray film for the first time it is kind of a head spin because your eyes are simply not use to that sort of quality on a TV screen. After a short while you get use to it and when you do it is so worth it! I have seen the Dark Knight on Blu-Ray and it almost feels like it is a different film all together.
I am a firm believer that the Blu-Ray will catch on with the public and will be the next progression in disc technology purely because it offers something that nothing else does. If you haven’t seen anything on Blu-Ray then please get yourself down to the nearest video shop and treat yourself. As far as getting a Blu-Ray player – the PS3 is a Blu-Ray player, other than that most modern flat screen TV’s all have Blu-Ray players in them so you could always get one of those.
DVD movies began to be produce in the 1990′s, and they became the dominant home video format sometime around 2000, a position that DVD’s enjoy even today. However, with a storage capacity of only 4.7 Gb, home theater users require discs which can hold high definition content, DVD’s simply do not have the storage capacity to hold all of that data. Therefore, nine leading electronics companies, including Sony, Samsung, and Sharp, began developing a next generation movie format to hold high definition video to usher in a new era of the home theater. With the so called “blue ray” specifications finalized, the average consumer can now afford to watch movies in high definition.
Comparison
The biggest difference between the DVD (digital versatile/video disc) format and the Blue ray format is that DVD players use a red laser to read data while Blue ray players use a blue/violet laser to read data. Basically, the shorter wavelength of the blue/violet laser means that Blue ray discs can store more data in the same amount of space, resulting in a limit of 50 Gb of data as opposed to 4.7 Gb for DVD. However, this has resulted in the players being much more expensive (at least initially) than DVD players, and adoption rates have been slow because of the following reasons (besides cost).
Average consumers have been confused in this recent “format war” between Blue ray and its rival format HD-DVD in the high definition home video market. The market was split nearly 50/50 in the beginning as vast marketing efforts in both areas and an even split in endorsements from large movie studios like Disney and Universal, with only two studios (Warner Bros. And Paramount) supporting both formats, although Warner Bros. will be Blue ray exclusive on May 31, and Paramount is already exclusively HD-DVD. As it currently stands, about 45% of planned and released titles are available on HD-DVD and 70% on Blue ray.
Besides this reason, Blue ray discs have picked up the pace as all of Sony’s PS3s can play Blue ray movies, with millions of consumers using their video game console to play movies on. An HD-DVD drive for Microsoft’s X-Box 360 was only available as an addition while the PS3 had built in support. If you are looking to have a brand new experience with movies where you are immersed into the action, then check out Blue ray players and movies.