The blu-ray is the new, advanced and enhanced disk format in the category of High definition DVD (Digital Versatile Disc). The blu-ray’s media factor is similar to that of the Compact disk and Digital Versatile Disc formats. This new format of blu-ray was introduced and developed by the BDA ( Blu-ray disk Association ). The BDA comprises of many companies related to the fields of Personal Computers and consumer electronics. The blu-ray discs have advantage over other formats of DVD disks, because the recording layer density of blu-ray is about five times more than the other DVD disks.
The blu-ray disks are available both in the forms of single and double layered disks. Work is being done on the four & eight layered blu-ray disks and the maximum recording capacity of these discs will be 200 Giga Bytes. The leading optical storage companies are manufacturing the blu-ray disks and drives. The blu-ray DVD disks and drives can be used in automated system and therefore, the blu-ray technology is useful in archive system. The disk library of blu-ray has capacity between 1 Terabyte to 35 Terabytes. The writing standard of data on the blu-ray is in Universal Disk Format (UDF). The recording standard of bluray supports all the leading operating systems.
The libraries of bluray are compatible with the Digital Versatile Disk & Compact disk both in writing and reading. These libraries of blu-ray format also give support to the offline-media management. The libraries can also be mounted in racks. That is why they are considered as robust and reliable. The bluray library is also supportive to the media management & caching algorithm. The drives of the blu-ray are standardized so that the bluray format could compete with the other DVD disk formats for longer period of time.
Both the single & dual layered bluray disks are supported by bluray drives of the 1st generation. The blu-ray disks are also compatible with the other DVD and Compact Disk technologies. The next generation of blu-ray drives will be compatible with both the 100 & 200 Gigabytes bluray discs along with the other DVD formats. The bluray writable disks usually have sectors and the error correction system is also advanced.
The 1st generation bluray drives have transfer speed of 9 Megabyte per second and the next generation drives will have transfer speed of 18 & 36 MB per second. The blu-ray technology is major addition in the optical storage environment. The single and the dual layer bluray disks have rewritable and write once format.
The other powerful feature of blu-ray is that its surface has a hard coating. In this way the disk is kept safe from scratches. Advancements are being made to take the recording capacity up to 200 Gigabytes. The blu-ray has more capacity because it has small lazer spot. This lazer spot is about 80 percent smaller than the Digital Versatile Disk (DVD). The 200 GB disk will have additional eight recording layers and each layer will have the capacity of 25 GB.
Work is also being done to speed up the transfer rate to 36 Megabytes per second. This will be a significant addition in the optical media. The blu-ray is very secure & safe storage media and is backed up by the leading vendors of media. The other optical formats require cartridge, but is not required by the blu-ray disk because of the hard-coating. The bluray technology is economical and also provides cost benefits to its users. The surface of bluray discs is conductive and they have resistance to humidity, scratch and extreme temperatures.
