The market is flooded with numerous digital versatile disc (DVD) players, small devices that play videos and music for us. Most DVD players need to be connected to a TV to display video, but some players now come with an attached LCD screen and stereo speakers. DVD players play discs in audio and video format.

The quality of any audio or video output on a screen is highly influenced by the format of the disc being played on the player. There are some optical disc formats compatible with one or other disc players and DVD players. They are compact disc (CD) formats, DVD formats, MP3 formats and others. These days, some companies are coming up with the next generation of optical disc format players. These next generation optical disc formats are known as Blu ray or Blu ray Disc (BD). These are high-density optical disc formats. Blu-ray discs store digital information and also high-definition (HD) video.

The name ‘Blu ray Disc’ is quite unusual, this name is derived from the violet Blu laser that used to read and write this type of disc. More data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on a DVD. This is due to the shorter wavelength of the Blu-violet laser, which is 405 nanometers. Almost 25 Gigabytes (GB) can be stored on a single layer BD. This is more than 5 times the capacity of a single layer DVD which can store almost 4.5GB alone. We have double layer BD that can store up to 50 GB of data.

The BD optical disc format was jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). BDA is a group of the world’s leading manufacturers of consumer electronics, personal computers and media. These include Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK, and Thomson. Blu-ray is backed by 180 of the world’s leading technology companies. These companies are big names in consumer electronics, personal computers, recording media, video games, and music businesses.

The BD format is widely supported by major movie studios. In fact, most of the prominent movie studios have released movies on Blu-ray format. These are Disney, Fox, Warner, Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate, and MGM. Six studios are releasing their movies exclusively on Blu-ray; They are Disney, Fox, Sony, Warner, Lionsgate and MGM.

Several electronic companies offer products that can read and write CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs. Companies such as Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Pioneer, Sharp and LG are developing BD/DVD/CD compatible optical head players. BD players are becoming popular due to that simple reason which is quality. In BD players we can also play DVD, it looks even better than before. Therefore, Blu-ray DVD players are the latest buzzword in the entertainment scene, producing a clear picture with vivid colors and crisp sound.

Due to the quality it offers, BD players are in high demand. Day by day, the demand for this next generation technology is increasing. This causes your cost of production to drop. Sony Company is taking advantage of this fact and reducing the price of its BD players. Several companies are taking the lead in manufacturing state-of-the-art BD players. Electronics Company Toshiba sells its high-definition (HD) DVD player for much less than Sony’s BD players. Now Sony is trying to get ahead in the market, so it has slashed £50 off the price of its BD player.

Sony’s Blu-ray discs are supported by companies like Samsung, Dell and Apple, while Toshiba’s HD DVD is supported by NEC, Sanyo and others. We can say that the format war is on. Both HDD and Blu-ray systems have almost the same functionalities, both store a large amount of data, both produce high-quality images and audio, and both use a blue laser to read information. There is only one difference, which is price. Therefore, Sony’s price reduction step may be an additional advantage of Sony’s BD players.