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5 Features
5.1.
What's a Blu-ray Disc?
The Blu-ray Disc (BD) is a next-generation optical disc format for storing a large amount of data using a short wavelength blue laser
to read and write. Like DVD, there are a number of BD standards, such as read-only BD-ROM, recordable BD-R and rewritable BD-
RE. The single largest feature of BD is its high-density data storage capacity of 25 GB per layer on one side. This lets you store
many hours of content, such as movies with HD resolution and high-quality music with loss-less audio compression. BD also fea-
tures a high-performance interactive function that uses Java™(*1), called BD-J, to deliver a new video experience to users not
offered by conventional video media. With many motion picture production companies and electronics, PC and gaming manufactur-
ers expressing their support for BD, new hardware and software products are expected to hit the market soon.
(*1): Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems
5.2.
Structure of the BD-Video Disc
The Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc with the same dimensions as the DVD disc: 12 cm in diameter and 1.2 mm in thickness. By using
a combination of the 405-nm-wavelength blue-violet laser, which is a shorter wavelength than the red laser used by DVD, and a
high-density objective lens with a numerical aperture of 0.85, BD uses a laser beam spot that is only about 1/5 the size used by
DVD. Thanks to these technologies, a single-layer BD-Video disc can store five times more data than a DVD disc.
5.3.
Benefits of the BD-Video Disc
1. One Single-Layer Disc Equals Five DVDs in Data
Capacity
The BD-Video disc boasts a data storage capacity of 25
GB in a single layer and 50GB in dual layer, because it
uses the shorter wavelength blue-violet laser and a high-
density objective lens to enable higher-density data
reading. When a multi-layer system is adopted in the
future, the storage capacity can increase to 100 GB and
even 200 GB. One BD-Video disc can store a huge
amount of data so users can enjoy many hours of high-
definition content and high-quality surround sound that
could not previously be provided by other media.
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