Note: We are now integrated with photoduniya.com and have moved to a new location. Please update your bookmark. Click here to go to the new location http://www.photoduniya.com/photography-blog/

.

When digital technology and advances made in digital sensors have created excellent cameras, it has constantly challenged the ability to store digital files – be it images or movie files. While Tera Bytes have become cheaper and softwares are becoming more efficient in retrieval of files, the main challenge that digital photographers and video makers face is that of an era of evolving file-creation technology.

The traditional CDs have slowly given way to the more efficient DVD format allowing us to store more images on a smaller media. The DVD format has constantly evolved and is going through another major evolution right at this moment! The Blu-Ray is in! Developed by the Blu-Ray Disck Association and funded and supported in various capacities by close to 200 world renowned electronic device & movie makers.

Contrary to the current disk writing technology of using the red laser beam (that has an effective wavelength of 650 nano meters) the Blu-Ray will use a Blue Violet laser (with an effective wavelength of 405 nano meters) allowing the technology to pack more content within the same space of the disk. A single-layer Blu-Ray disk can store 25 Gigabytes of content compared to 4.7 GB of a DVD and a double-layer Blu-Ray disk can store as much as 50 GB compared to 8.5 GB of a DVD!

While the Blu-Ray technology is supported by a large array of disk makers and industry leaders including:

Apple Computer, Inc.
Dell Inc.
Hewlett Packard Company
Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
TDK Corporation
Thomson Multimedia
Twentieth Century Fox
Walt Disney Pictures
Warner Bros. Entertainment

a competing technology, named the HD-DVD, is extensively developed by Toshiba & NEC.

Although at this time, the Blu-Ray evolution is backed up by the largest number of the world’s leaders of electronic device manufacturers and movie makers, the capacity advantage is surely in favor of Blu-Ray. With a larger Numerical Aperture of 0.85 exceeds that of HD-DVD’s 0.65, allowing it to put in more data on the same disk. As a comparison, a single-layer Blu-Ray disc packs in 25 GB vis-a-vis 15 GB for a HD-DVD while a double-layer Blu-Ray disk packs 50 GB compared to 30 GB for a HD-DVD.