The advancement of technology has truly come a long way and has changed the way people watch movies for the better It was not long ago that people watch movies at home through their VCR's which accepts Betamax tapes and VHS tapes. These bulky tapes were replaced first by VCDs or video compact discs that have a storage capacity of 700 MB. Because of the low storage capacity of these VCDs, one full length movie requires two VCDs. LaserDiscs (LD) soon replaced VCDs but was short-live as DVDs entered the scene. DVDs are short for Digital Versatile Discs and have six times the storage capacity of that of VCDs.



A single DVD with a storage capacity of 4.7 GB is capable of storing one full-length movie as well as other behind-the-scene footages and other extra features. Because of this, DVDs have revolutionized the movie industry as more and more people are buying DVDs and watching them at home. The DVD may however be replaced by a new technology that would further enhance the movie industry. The new High Definition media technology is called Blu-ray.

Blu-Ray technology is considered to be the next-generation DVD. Blu-Ray Discs or BD can record, store and are able to play back more video, digital audio, as well as computer data. BDs can also store a full length high-definition movie which usually takes a higher bandwidth and storage space. Compared to DVDs. Blu-Ray Discs have the advantage on the amount of information that it can store. A single-layer BD has the capacity to store 27 GB of digital information. This single-layer BD is enough to hold more than two hours of high-definition videos or to hold more than 13 hours of standard video. A double-layer BD on the other hand can be able to store more than 4.5 hours of high-definition video because of its 50 GB storage capacity.

Laser lights are effectively the way in which optical disc storage media (for example DVD and Blu-ray) are able to read information, with Blu-ray utilizing blue violet rays whereas DVD uses red ultraviolet rays. The amount of information that can be stored in discs is dependent on how large and precise the laser light is. Blue laser has a shorter wavelength than that of red laser and because of this, blue laser is more precise and can write information in much smaller spaces. For this reason much more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc.

A huge storage capacity is not the only advantage of a Blu-Ray technology. Blu-Ray Discs can also transfer information at a higher rate. BDs have a data transfer rate of 36 Mbps (megabits per second) which is higher than that of DVDs which transfer only at 10 Mbps.

Two technologies namely, Blu-ray and High Definition DVD (HD-DVD)are competing against each other to successfully become the official storage medium for the future of high definition media. Blu-Ray discs were first utilized by Sony in their PlayStation 3 games and because of this, BD is now becoming popular among giant movie production studios such as Warner Brothers which have stated that they will only release their High Definition movies in BD formats starting May of 2008.