Welcome back class, I hope you all had a good extended weekend, but now it’s time to learn.  With all the crazy talk about Blue Ray and High Definition Discs I figured we should wrap our brains around this new technology.  Before we do that, let’s do a quick review.  In early home video we had the VHS Tape and Beta Max Tapes, two of the same, but different formats.  Eventually Beta Max became a thing of the past and VHS prevailed and marched right into the era of digital video.  When we got tired of dealing with the ups and downs of analog and wanted to go to the in and outs of digital, we opened a world of new players and features that one would never dream of.  Instead of fast-forwarding for thirty minutes to get to your favorite part of the movie, you just click and your there.  The problem with that was the disc was huge and did not store much, so the Video CD quickly died and VHS was back.  Now digital did not want to give up, when it fell on its face DVDs came out and convinced everyone, almost.  Features, and crystal clear pictures were the sell, and we bought it.  The only thing missing from DVDs are storage, on a VHS you can store up to 6.5 hours of video, where as on a DVD (if you want the right quality) you can get 2 hours (or 8 hours on a dual layer, double sided disc, but the burners and discs for that type of home usage is not cheap).  So now we have quality but no quantity, so computers start coming with gigabyte drives in the hundreds or even tera byte drives (1,000,000,000 bytes) meaning you have virtually unlimited storage, but no where to go. Who needs storage though?  We want quality right so let’s talk HD (High Definition). 

With everyone screaming High Definition and flat panels, it’s no wonder DVDs have evolved.  So what’s the deal with HD and Blue Ray?  Can it be trusted, is it worth it and will it live long?  Well here is the nitty-gritty; first off HD and Blue Ray Discs are read with a blue laser, not the conventional red laser, delivering more data at a faster speed thus giving you the higher quality picture in shorter times.  An HD and Blue ray Disc can hold 15 GB of information versus the 4.7 GB of a DVD.  Now you can do dual layer doubling the storage to 30 GB, eventually there will be dual layer-double sided giving you 60 GB.  Right off back HD and Blue ray sound better.  With that said you can store The Lord of the Rings Saga on one disc versus having three, unless you want the High Definition and jump out at you with ear busting sound and features beyond your mind can handle like the life and times of Ian McKellen.  That’s what HD and Blue ray Disc promise, more features and more interesting angles.  Imagine watching, let’s say Batman Beginnings III on your HD or Blue ray Player and you can, at the push of a button, watch it from Batman’s view, or the right angle instead of the left angle, you would $h!+ your draws.  So with more space, you get more features.  With faster speeds you have less load time, but with all of this you get higher prices.  

HD and Blue Ray Players are initially rumored to be around $1,300 dollars (making the price of PS3 so much more understandable), but hey after you buy you $2,376 flat panel television, $1,499 Bose sound system, $372 worth of cables and $72 remote what is another $1,300?  With that you will also buy your movies at the price you buy Metal Gear 4. 

Lastly we are going to talk about HD and Blue Ray, why are there two different names?  The reason behind this is simply pride.  Two companies (I will not name names) wanted to come out with their own formats, so we have the VHS and Beta max wars again.  Luckily for us two companies are working out the legal logistics of a hybrid disc that will play both HD and Blue ray, and only cost 150% more than a DVD.  Well that is pretty much it for HD/Blue ray 101, if you want more info sign up for HD Video 201 or Disc Burning 201.  There will be a test Friday so make sure you study. 

Later 

“I am not that interested right now due to the price, we can finally by a DVD player cheaper than we buy the movies and now they want us to dish out thousands for this?  After buying everything for a proper HD setup (about $5,617), you could of put down a descent payment for a car or seen 661 movies at the theatre (in Pittsburgh).  So I think I’ll wait” 

-E.Night-

*Update Apparently HD and Blue ray Disc have multi layer functions.  There is a six layer Blue ray disc giving 200 GB of data.  With this you back a complete computer system onto a single disc or maybe video games can get real endings back.