Differences between HD-DVD and Blu-ray DVD?

Question: What is Blu-ray and What Was HD-DVD? - What Is The Difference?

NOTICE: HD-DVD is now officially discontinued. However, information on HD-DVD, and its comparison to Blu-ray, is still contained in this article for historical purposes, as well as the fact that there are still many HD-DVD player owners, and HD-DVD players and discs will continue to be sold and traded on the secondary market for some time.

Answer:

HD-DVD (now discontinued) was the second major High Definition Disc format (see Blu-ray, above) that was vying to replace the current DVD standard in the U.S. market, and was a direct competitor of Blu-ray for two years.

HD-DVD was supported, during its brief time on the scene, by Toshiba (its major developer and backer), LG (also supported HD-DVD), NEC, Sanyo, Thomson (Note: Thomson also supported Blu-ray), New Line Cinema, Paramount Pictures, and Universal Pictures. Microsoft was also a major supporter of HD-DVD. It is interesting to note that although HD-DVD has been discontinued, Toshiba has not switched to the Blu-ray camp and is persuing its own course with a re-emphasis on improving standard DVD upscaling technology and other products.

In terms of technology, Blu-ray and HD-DVD both utilize Blue Laser and sophisticated video compression to achieve high definition video playback on the same size disc as a standard DVD. However, neither format is compatible with the other.

Blu-ray is one of the two major High Definition disc formats (see HD-DVD, below) that were vying to replace the current DVD standard in the U.S. market. As of February 19, 2008, only Blu-ray is left. However, information on both formats is being included here for historical reasons, and the fact that there still HD-DVD player owners and several hundred films available in the format. 

Blu-ray is now supported on the hardware side by all major manufacturers and movie studios including: Denon, Funai, Hitachi, LG, Matsushita (Panasonic), Onkyo, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, HP, Dell, Apple, TDK, Thomson, and Yamaha. Blu-ray is also supported on the software side by Sony/Columbia, Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, MGM, Paramount, Warner, and Universal, and others. Apple Computer also supports Blu-ray. 

Rip the Main Movie from Blu-ray to MP4

What is Blu-ray?

Blu-ray is an optical disc format designed to display high definition video and store large amounts of data.

Blu-ray is the successor to DVD. The standard was developed collaboratively by Hitachi, LG, Matsushita (Panasonic), Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Thomson. It became the default optical disk standard for HD content and optical data storage after winning a format war with HD-DVD, the format promoted by Toshiba and NEC.

The format's name comes from the fact that a blue laser reads from and writes to the disc rather than the red laser of DVD players. The blue laser has a 405 nanometer (nm) wavelength that can focus more tightly than the red lasers used for writable DVD. As a consequence, a Blu-ray disc can store much more data in the same 12 centimeter space. Like the rewritable DVD formats, Blu-ray uses phase change technology to enable repeated writing to the disc.

Blu-ray's standard storage capacity is enough to store a continuous backup copy of most people's hard drives on a single disc. Initially, the format had a 27 gigabyte (GB) single-sided capacity and 50 GB on dual-layer discs. Single-sided Blu-ray discs can store up to 13 hours of standard video data, compared to single-sided DVD's 133 minutes. In July 2008, Pioneer announced that they had found a way to increase capacity to 500 GB by creating 20-layer discs. These discs are not, however, expected to be commercially available in the near future.

Blu-ray also features data streams at 36 megabits per second (Mbps), fast enough for high quality video recording. Blu-ray discs will not play on current CD and DVD players, because those players lack the blue-violet laser required to read the discs. If the appropriate lasers are included, however, Blu-ray players can play the other two formats. Blu-ray disc players (BDPs) are available from a number of manufacturers, including Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung and Sony. Sony's Playstation 3 also has a Blu-ray drive installed.