Cheap Blu Ray Player

A new format, the BDXL (High Capacity Recordable and Rewritable discs), have been announced by the Blu-ray Association. The Blu-ray XL or BDXL will have an increased disc capacity of 128GB. (This is more than 27 DVDs can have.) Expected sometime in the summer of 2010. The BDXL format will mostly be used by the commercial or profession sectors.

While the increased in disc capacity is good news, the new format can not be used on current Blu-ray Players. These new discs have four readable layers. The lasers found on current players are just not powerful enough to handle the new format. New players will be need to be purchased in order to use them.

While your currently players will not become obsolete anytime soon. It will be a few years before this new BDXL format makes it way to home users. There are some good possible functions of this new format. An increase in disc capacity should mean the Blu-ray XL format can have a higher quality High Definition and store more movies and TV show onto a single disc.  Read more...

If you have even thought about this question, then at the very least you know that there has been an ongoing controversy about the standard of the next generation of Digital Video Data. If you haven’t thought about yet, here’s the low down.

Toshiba and Sony both had digital video technologies in the works back in the early 1990s. Toshiba won that battle with the DVD that we all know and love. Sony started working on the future of DVD technology and came up with the Blu Ray Disc. Toshiba was also looking to the future with their answer to the future, HD DVD.

The technical differences between the two new standards are not all that great. Blu Ray discs can hold more data and are more expensive due to a special process needed to create the final layer. The surface layer of HD DVD is the same as current DVDs, 0.6mm. Blu Ray is only 0.1mm thick and has to have a special super strong coating applied to them to keep them from scratching too easily and becoming unusable.  Read more...

Blu-ray and HD DVD (High Definition DVD) are two conflicting storage technologies for digital media like high definition movies, games and other audio visual material. There are a few other technologies emerging but it seems that these two rivals are the big players in the battle for home consumers hearts and minds. So what are they, which one is better and who is likely to win the latest technology format war.

Blu-ray was created by the Blu ray Disc Association, an association of major consumer electronics producers, like Sony and Panasonic, as a high capacity storage device to replace the standard DVD format. HD DVD was developed by the DVD forum, an alternative association of high tech electronics producers, including Toshiba and NEC, as their replacement of standard DVD.  Read more...

There have been several different solutions proposed to end the format war between Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD DVD high def DVD formats. One possible solution is a disc that has a Blu-ray version of a movie on one side and an HD DVD version of the same movie on the other side. If discs like these became universal then consumers wouldn’t have to decide between buying an HD DVD player or a Blu-ray player. Any disc could be used by either player.  Read more...