The term Blu-ray has been bandied about alot but just what is it and how is it going to affect you and your precious DVD collection? Well, let's take a look ...

From the official website ... "Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience."

BDs actually get their name because a Blue-violet laser is used to read and write data ... as opposed to the standard DVDs which use a red laser. BDs are 50GB, this means storage of more than 9 hours of high definition (HD) film or 23 hours of standard definition (SD) film ... whoa baby. This all comes at a cost though as you'll need a Blu-Ray drive to "play" the BD ($1400 AUD approximately for an internal BD drive for your PC) and the BD's themselves cost around $35 AUD a piece.

For the last year or so there's been a quiet war going on in the HD DVD Versus BD world and as of December 2006 it seems that BD has taken over the lead as official sales figures for BD topped HD DVD for the first time in the lead up to Christmas. This seems to be solely because of the gaming console market ... Sony's PlayStation 3 uses BD technology, the first to step up to the mark, while other large Companies like Toshiba have stuck their necks out and launched HD DVD drives. Its a move reminiscent of the VHS Vs BetaMAX war but gamers don't seem to care or want to wait to see who wins because they're going with BD and the PS3. The Santa Clara Consulting group have claimed that "by 2010, blue-laser [sic] gaming consoles are predicted to reach $6 billion in sales and the games themselves could reach $10 billion".

Microsoft appear to have put a spanner in the works because they've stated that 32-bit versions of Windows Vista won't be able to play back next generation high definition protected content. What does this mean for us lowly plebs? It means that if you upgrade to Windows Vista and have a 32 bit machine you wont be able to play BDs (or HD DVDs for that matter) on your PC's BD drive. So, you either sit tight with XP or upgrade your hardware. Similar to what happened with protected DVDs ... dedicated hackers found a way to play the protected DVDs on their computers but for everybody else it was an unnecessary frustration.

That $1400 AUD BD drive I spoke of earlier also has a couple of problems at the moment according to Sony's Vincent Bautista who says there are two reasons why BDs wont play on their new BD drive; 1) because commercial content is encrypted with High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), which can only be decrypted using a HDCP-compliant graphics card that offers DVI or HDMI connections. Since there are currently no PCs for sale offering graphics chips that support HDCP, this isn't yet possible. And, 2) is that BD playback software that can decrypt HDCP isn't "released as a saleable item yet". All this probably means that BD technology won't overtake SD DVDs in the short term and it definitely means that I won't be parting with any dollars until the future is a little less blurry.

Before putting this article to bed I decided to research the film market and see what was happening there and surprise surprise the big guns were coming out everywhere. On the 10th October last year Sony released their first Blu-ray film "Click" starring Adam Sandler and many more have followed including 50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, xXx, Ultraviolet, Underworld: Evolution, Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction, The Benchwarmers, Stealth, RV, Silent Hill, Into the Blue, Memento, SWAT, A Knight's Tale, The Big Hit and Tears of the Sun. And the cost? Ranging from $18 to $30 USD a piece. Sony have a big catalogue of films and they plan on re-releasing them all on BD. Hmmmmmm. So even though there will be problems actually playing BDs they're out there and there's a swag more coming. I took a wander over to DVDEmpire.com and there were six pages of films listed including current release and non-Sony stuff ... It looks like we'll all have to buy a PS3 just so we can actually watch a Blu-ray HD film to see what all the fuss is about :) ... and it also means that I now know why DVDs have come down in price so much and why they're practically giving them away at K-Mart and Target. Surely I won't have to buy Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs again? OMG or worse!!! I just got the entire collection of Buffy on DVD for Christmas ... this is getting serious.