What separates Blue Ray DVDs from regular DVDs?

[freethought]

Sorry if it seems like a dumb question. But I read that Blue Ray was supposed to be "the New THING".
but nobody has really explained to me what it is.

All I can seem to deduce is that it is a high-def form of a DVD.
Can someone give me a laymen's explanation?

Thanks In Advance!

Freethought

[Reverend_Smitty]

1. I think the picture quality is supposed to be much better...

I don't know the technical bits behind it, but if you ask me the difference between a regular DVD player and a Blu-Ray DVD player is about $800 :shrug:

[freethought]

2. Good enough for me! Thanks!! n/t

[sir_captain]

14. Prices will come down quickly

The PS3 is an excellent Blu-Ray player, and can be had for $500. And Sony has just announced a new standalone player with a MSRP of $500, so it will sell for less than that. I'd imagine that by christmas 2007, we'll see both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players in the $350 range, which is getting a lot closer to being affordable for normal people.

[SKKY]

3. Because the Blue Ray used to write to Blue Ray DVDs...

...is soooooooo much smaller than the Red ray used in standard DVDs, it allows you to place that much more "data" on
a DVD, and of course read it as well. It's a very big deal indeed.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. If you don't know what 1080p is, don't worry,,,

but the newest hi def disk formats have something like five times as many pixels as "regular" digital hi def video like you get over cable or satellite. And the detail is incredible, but you need to spend another couple of grand to get a TV to show it right if you don't already have the right 52" hi def digital TV.

Thing is, though, with their $800 players there are two formats fighting for the market-- think Betamax and VHS. Both are pretty good, but who knows who'll win and eventually get the price down to a hundred bucks.

Plenty of time to wait until it all sorts out, even if you do have the bucks for one of the systems.

Some electronics stores have Blu-Ray Rooms where you can see for yourself how good the stuff looks. Around here, they're pretty popular with oglers but I don't see much cash changing hands.

[freethought]

5. Impressive! Guess I'll have to wait though. n/t

[pokerfan]

6. Wait until the porn industry decides

I've read that Sony doesn't want to sell the bulk copying machines to pornographers:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9008579

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

7. I don't think I'd WANT high-def porn.

Some things are best left a little fuzzy.

[underpants]

8. I read somewhere that they weren't too crazy about it either

but a google search is pulling up nothing right now..er maybe that wasn't the best way to put that

[sir_captain]

13. Not going to be too influential this time, I don't think

when VHS/Betamax was an issue, it was a big deal, because before then, people had to go to creepy movie theaters to watch porn. Videotapes are what brought it into the home. Theseadays, you can go on the internet and download as much porn as you want for free, so that incentive really doesn't exist.

And as others have said, I don't think anyone really wants to see all that stuff in crystal-clear high-definition anyway.

[MonkeyFunk]

9. It's just....

a super-expensive piece of shit that nobody needs.'

I've been watching DVDs for years and never once have I thought "Gee, I wish the picture quality were better."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

11. Really?

I watch lots of older movies and lots of times the transfers and loss of def are pretty striking.

(I studied film in college, though, so maybe I'm a little biased from having seen lots of classics on actual film.)

[I Have A Dream]

17. The technology's really good though for software companies whose...

products exceed the size of a regular DVD.

[bikebloke]

10. Format War

I wouldn't buy into it just now. There's a format war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Like the video war between VHS and Beta. Both with similar high definition. Regular DVD won't be vanishing for a long while. I sometimes read discussions over at Home Theater Forum. The hard core folks are real vidiots. The even argue over DVD art work and how it will look on their shelves. There was a long survey on the new formats. Most are quite content with standard DVD, and have no intention of adapting for the time being.

[sir_captain]

12. Blu-ray will win the format war, eventually

It has far more studio support and better technical specifications.

It could take a while, though. One probably cannot tell the difference between a regular DVD and a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc on a regular television, so until everyone has HDTVs (which is slowly but surely happening) I don't think we'll see the DVD format ending.

Eventually, since both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players are backwards compatible with DVD, the manufacturers will stop making regular DVD players altogether, and that will be the biggest impetus toward change.

Some will argue that it's just a way for the movie studios to force people to buy movies they already own on a new format, but as a film purist, I'd argue that HD formats are a good thing, because they come far closer to approximating the actual picture quality of real film, and that's a really good thing.

[Deja Q]

15. About 45GB per disc

Regular DVDs contain 4.7 or 9GB of data on them; compressed.

Blu-Ray (not related to Rachel Ray) contains 50GB, if I recall rightly...

Entire TV seasons could fit on one Blu-Ray disc, though whoever said that would ruin the concept of selling Blu-Ray as a high-end video format. DVD once sold as the high-end format (replacing LaserDisc) but somebody later retconned and claimed it was a replacement for VHS... :eyes:

[Javaman]

16. But what comes after Blu-Ray????

:scared:

[sir_captain]

19. I don't think anything will

for one thing, Blu-Ray is scalable--they can stack more layers onto the discs and get an almost unlimited amount of storage. There are already prototypes of 8-layer discs that hold 400GBs!

I'd say it's the last real form of optical media, though. In the future, I'd think it's more likely that we'll see network based stuff--you'll download movies over super high speed net connections, for instance.

[Javaman]

20. Naaa, they will figure out a way to download it directly into our brains. lol nt

[sir_captain]

18. I'd say it was more a replacement for both

It started out as a niche product like laserdisc was and ended up being a mass consumer product (way more than VHS ever was, really.)