Monday, February 2, 2009

The Origins of Blu-ray

By Jack Cromwell

High definition has become an important part of today's society. The HD disc format is Blu-ray disc, which many HD users have heard of but do not know much about.

Blu-ray was initially one of the answers to the need for HD discs. When HDTVs were introduced in the late 90s, a format was needed to go along with them.

High definition requires a vast amount of data to operate. All the types of media that could be purchased did not meet this need. The apparent method of increasing storage capacity was to use a blue laser.

A man named Shuji Nakamura is credited with developing a blue laser for commercial use. Prior to his invention, the existing blue lasers were too big and expensive to be used practically. His invention of blue laser diodes facilitated the creation of HD DVD and Blu-ray.

After this invention, Sony and Philips started working together to create a medium which utilized the blue laser diodes. The original projects were known as Ultra Density Optical and DVR Blue. These were the prototypes to modern Blu-ray.

After much improvement, Blu-ray was introduced in early 2002. The Blu-ray Disc Association was created to manage the format.

The introduction of Blu-ray may have been a bit premature, as it was two years later that the format actually was finished. Even then, it took one more year for everything to be complete.

The genius behind Blu-ray has made it the number one HD media. Nearly every new movie released comes out on both DVD and Blu-ray. The prospects for the future look exciting as well. - 15275

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