Blue-ray media

Blue-ray media

As well as incredible picture quality and digital surround sound provided by Blu-ray discs and Blu-ray players, the studio business is also very thrilled by Blu-ray’s interactive possibilities.
Although there is not much talk about interactivity yet, when it becomes available on all Blu-ray players, interactivity is something that will add lots of satisfaction to watching a movie at home. However, although this is a future aim, interactivity is not yet supported by all Blu-ray players. Blu-ray has been designed to offer a more rewarding, and more refined interactive experience compared to current DVDs.

Blu-Ray interactivity has been centred around not having to pause or interrupt your movie. Pop-up menus appear on screen during the Blu-ray movie ensuring you can make changes without stopping or pausing the movie. A new more powerful interactive mode has also been recently developed, which allows your Blu-ray player to download additional content about your movie, but this requires you to have a connection to the Internet.
A good example of when this may be useful is if you need to access subtitles in your own language for a foreign Blu-ray movie.

Blu-ray will also allow picture in picture on your television, and using the fantastic new powerful interactivity, you could use the Blu-ray technology to download, for example, exclusive extras for the movie you are viewing, or director’s comments. Blu-ray recorders are becoming available and more affordable, and this will ensure that you can record movies as well, but there is currently a distinct need for more choice in Blu-ray recorders on the market.

If you intend to rush out and buy a Blu-ray player, it is worth reading through the following hints.

As with DVDs, Blu-ray also has region control, although Blu-ray has only three regions, A, B and C:

Region A is categorised as the US, Canada, Japan and Hong Kong
Region B consists of Europe, Australia and South Africa
Region C is China, Russia and other countries

It is worth noting that not all studios use the region system. Warner Bros., for example, has not (yet!) released a single Blu-ray disc that is region protected. However, on the other hand, Fox has never released a Blu-ray disc that is not region-locked. The tendency is for new releases to be region-locked, and for catalogue releases to be region-free.

There are also some complicated scenarios though, where Blu-ray films released are locked eg in Region A, but the same Blu-ray film is region-free when it is available in Region B. An example of this was when the movie Eight Below by Disney was released by Buena Vista the US release was region-locked but in Australia, it was region-free.

This matters when, for example, in Australia, prices for Blu-ray movies are an average of £20 each. However, in the US, the average price for Blu-ray movies is only £13, and as low as £8 on sale. As a result of this, there are much greater sales in Region A than in Region B countries.

DVD playback will also be region-locked, using the current DVD region-locking system. However, it is possible to unlock the DVD Region systems on most Blu-ray standalones.

Blu-ray Recorders
With more people choosing to upgrade to Blu-ray and HDTV, the need for recording high definition content like Blu-ray will increase. Blu-ray has been designed to be highly compatible with the global standard for digital broadcasting, making it easier to record onto Blu-ray discs.
There is an increased amount of data storage required for HD video, and Blu-ray uses a data transfer rate which is adequate to record and playback digital HD broadcasts while ensuring original picture quality is always preserved. Also, by using Blu-ray disc's random accessing features, it is possible to record high-definition video being broadcast on TV and at the same time, play back pre-recorded video on a disc

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Now that the format war is over, Sony is free to focus on additional Blu-ray related products, to provide various extra functionality and compatibility with other Sony products. Their latest announcements, namely the BDZ-A70 and BDZ-T90 Blu-ray recorders, will provide a very interesting feature aimed at other customers of Sony who own Sony PSP and Walkmans. The two new recorders offer users the ability to transfer the recorded video content onto their portable devices fast and easily.

Game Consoles
The Sony PS3 comes with Blu-ray playback and sometimes with a free Blu-ray movie as well! It is an excellent Blu-ray player with quicker loading compared to the less powerful standalone Blu-ray players, and the operation is fairly quiet.

The PS3 also offers DVD upscaling to an excellent quality, although there are better upscalers on the market which use the Reon VX chipset. It is also important to ensure you purchase separately the PS3 Blu-ray remote (the official one), which will make your Blu-ray experience much better.

The issues we have outlined here including software profiles and loading speed are important to your whole Blu-ray experience, so decide which of these criteria are most important to you before deciding which Blu-ray player to choose.

Computer Based Players
There are now more PCs and laptops than ever before on the market which have a Blu-ray drive pre-installed. The Sony Vaio and Dell XPS laptops both have pre-installed Blu-ray drives. Most large PC manufacturers will now allow you to add a Blu-ray drive to new computer systems. If you’re technically minded, you can also build your own by buying a Blu-ray drive. Drives are available from Asus/Lite-on/Pioneer and Sony, and LG are currently offering dual format drives.

Computer based playback has some strict hardware requirements, including a fast CPU, lots of RAM and a HDCP enabled graphics card and monitor. Currently, PowerDVD Ultra from Cyberlink, WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray from Corel and Arcsoft Totalmedia Theatre are the players of choice available for PCs.

BLU-RAY DISCS
Blu-ray Discs (BD) are exactly the same diameter (12 cm) as Compact Discs and DVDs. The major difference with Blu-ray discs, however, is loads more storage capacity. This is necessary to hold HD content such as videos, sound and more.

Briefly, the technology behind Blu-ray Disc uses a Blue/violet laser that’s focused to produce a very small pinpoint of light – five times smaller than the beam used with DVD playback.
Tracks of data are then squeezed together on the Blu-ray disc twice as tightly as on a DVD. The super-fine laser beam allows Blu-ray Disc to hold an amazing capacity of 25GB of data on a single-sided, single layer disc.
A single-sided dual layer disc holds up to 50GB of data. A single layer Blu-ray disc can hold nearly three hours of movie entertainment in 1080-line Full HD with multi-channel digital surround sound plus loads of interactive features and extras thrown in.

As well as the tremendous picture quality and digital multi-channel surround sound offered by Blu-ray players and Blu-ray discs, the studios are very excited about Blu-ray’s interactive potential.
Interactivity is not yet supported by all Blu-ray players, but it will add great value to your enjoyment of a movie. Blu-ray has been designed to offer a more rewarding and more interactive experience compared to DVD.
The availability of pop-up menus on screen without interrupting the Blu-ray movie is a long awaited feature. If the Blu-ray player has got an internet connection, some Blu-ray players will allow you to download additional footage from a server to enhance your Blu-ray experience.

Blu-ray film makers and distributors are very excited about the interactive possibilities of Blu-ray. It would be possible to eg view the webcast of an exclusive director’s commentary that’s available over the Internet and shown as a picture-in-picture on your TV screen.
More Blu-ray recorders are becoming available meaning that we will soon be able to record in HD. Currently there are not many Blu-ray recorders on the market, but this is likely to change in the run up to Christmas this year.

There is excellent support for Blu-ray from companies of all types. Nearly all major Hollywood studios have embraced Blu-ray Disc as the future in optical disc format technology.

The prominent American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) has expressed its support for the new Blu-ray format.
Blu-ray also brings the thrill of live music right into your home. Not only do you feel that you are right there with amazing picture quality but the sound quality is like nothing you have experienced before. Blu-ray brings you closer to the musicians with amazing audio quality.