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Blu-Ray Buying Guide

Overview

When HDTV  began to slowly gain acceptance around the world, it was only a matter of time before electronics companies with an investment in home video viewing and recording began to follow suit. This is where Blu-Ray  comes in. The Blu-Ray format was developed as a joint-partnership between Philips  and Sony,  who wanted to introduce the world's first high-definition media format. This proved problematic, as rivals Toshiba  and NEC  were developing their own high-definition platform, HD DVD.  Both formats were released at about the same time in 2006, but didn't become popular due to the high prices of players. Despite Microsoft's  push for the HD DVD format (they even released an Xbox 360  HD DVD add-on), enough movie studios finally defected to the Blu-Ray camp, forcing HD DVD off the market. Now, as the sole high-definition media format, Blu-Ray has started to pick up steam with consumers, in part because of the PlayStation 3's  inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive, but also because the prices of Blu-Ray players have begun to fall to reasonable levels.

 

Specifications

For all those science-y types in the house, here's a painfully simple overview of how Blu-Ray works and what it can do.

  • Blu-Ray gets its name from the type of laser used to read this discs. Blu-Ray discs are read using a blue laser (duh), as opposed to the traditional red lasers of yesteryear. Because blue lasers operate on a shorter wavelength than red lasers, data on a Blu-Ray disc will be readable even if densely stored. This is what allows a single-layer Blu-Ray disc to hold 25GB of data, or roughly 35 times the capacity of a standard CD.
  • Blu-Ray movies can be played at either 720p or 1080p resolutions and are natively encoded with Dolby Digital DTS surround sound for the best in audio and visual quality.

Films

Blade Runner: The Final Cut 

The Dark Knight 

Iron Man 

Wall-E bu ray 

Mad Men - Season 1 

 

Players

Sony PlayStation 3 

Sony BDP-S550 

Sharp BD-AV10 

Pioneer BD-LX80 
 

Related Guides

Sony PlayStation 3 Buying Guide

HDTV Buying Guide

Slingbox Buying Guide

External Links