Blu-ray is the next generation in home entertainment! Like a DVD, a Blu-ray disc holds a movie or television show, but holds much more storage with better resolution and sound. This also allows Blu-ray to provide high-definition video and audio. In contrast, a standard DVD can only hold 5GB of data whereas a Blu-ray disc can hold 50GB of data. What does this mean for you as the consumer? By having a large storage capacity, movies can be stored in high-definition on a Blu-ray disc, which was not possible on a DVD disc because of the storage capacity. Most people have been upgrading to high-definition televisions over the past several years, so they can now watch their favorite movies in high-definition as well.
Blu-ray got its name because of the process involved in the player reading the disc. In a Blu-ray player, there is an actual blue colored laser or “ray†that is aimed directly at the disc to read the data. This blue laser can read a DVD also, so DVDs can be played on a Blu-ray player, but the red laser used to read DVDs cannot read the Blu-ray disc, and therefore a Blu-ray disc cannot be played on a DVD player.
By 2010, Blu-ray, like online casino sites and gaming, has quickly gained in popularity and has begun to replace the DVD. In 2009 sales for Blu-ray players in the United States grew to more than 400,000. Although Samsung was the first to market the Blu-ray player in 2006, there are now many choices of Blu-ray player manufacturers to choose from. As popularity for the Blu-ray discs grows, DVD sales will continue to decline, and soon Blu-ray will take its place as the standard for optical disc storage devices. Although in the meantime, it is common now to see movies and/or television shows packaged with both a Blu-ray disc and a DVD.