Even though most people still have CD and DVD burners, you probably bought a Blu-ray movie. Due to the high cost, Blu-ray drives will only be installed on consumer computers or higher-end computers from companies such as Dell or HP.
If you enjoy watching movies on your computer and have a high quality monitor, it might be worth the extra cost. However, most people spend their money on more expensive high definition TVs, and as such, most Blu-ray discs you buy today are for movies. Most Blu-ray players are standalone devices or come bundled with game consoles.
If you want to start using Blu-ray discs for physical storage of large amounts of data, then the best option is to simply buy an external Blu-ray burner online. You can get a decent Blu-ray burner that can write at 14X for about $ 50 on Amazon. These cheaper ones will let you burn 25GB and 50GB discs. If you spend a little more (around $ 110), you can get an external Blu-ray burner that supports BD-XL discs that go up to a whopping 128GB.
In this article, I will introduce the different Blu-ray formats and some of their technical specifications. Blu-ray discs are a great way to quickly and cheaply back up large amounts of data that would otherwise require a really large cloud storage plan or large external hard drive.
After I bought an HD camcorder in 2010, I suddenly had hundreds of gigabytes of data on my computer. The first solution was to copy all this data to a 2TB external hard drive. It worked great and I still do it today, but one of my external hard drives failed and I lost a lot of video. It was too expensive and slow to store all this data in the cloud, so I started burning Blu-ray discs.
The great thing about disks is that they won’t let you down if you take care of them. Until they are destroyed, my data will be securely stored on these drives for a very long time. It’s just another way to back up your data in case of hard drive crashes, which happen more often than you might think.
Another good reason to buy them is to watch your movie collection on your HDTV. If you have an Xbox One or PS4 console, you can burn movies to Blu-ray disc and play them directly. It’s actually much easier than trying to stream your content from your computer or NAS to an HDTV, which requires a gigabit connection between all of your devices.
BD-R, BD-RE, and BD DL
When Blu-ray first came out, there were actually only two types of discs: recordable and rewritable. BD-R discs are for recording only, while BD-REs are rewritable. The standard size of these drives is 25 GB and they only have one layer. They cost about $ 1 per disc.
After a while, dual layer Blu-ray discs began to appear. Like dual layer DVDs, these Blu-ray discs can hold twice as much data as regular discs, or 50 GB in that case. These discs are significantly more expensive at over $ 2 per disc.
The BD-RE DL disc (50 GB and rewritable) is even more expensive at around $ 3 per disc. So how long does it take to burn one of these Blu-ray discs? Well, it all depends on the speed of your burner and the size of the disc. Here is a diagram from Wikipedia:
BD-XL TL, BD-XL QL, BD-XL DS TL
Now let’s move on to the newer materials where the really big sizes start to appear. BD-XL discs were announced in 2010 and they come in two flavors: three-layer (TL) and four-layer (QL). The BD-XL TL can hold up to 100 GB of data, and the BD-XL QL up to 128 GB.
Together with the big size comes a big price! BD-XL TL discs start at $ 10 per disc. It doesn’t look like QL discs have ever picked up steam because I can’t even find a place where they are sold. It seems that 100GB drives are the most popular when it comes to BD-XL.
BD-XL DS (Double-sided) TL is another Blu-ray Disc Association-approved specification that will support up to 200GB, but will only be cost-effective for commercial use such as data centers, cloud computing. etc.
For consumers, the most you can get from Blu-ray is a BD-XL writer and a BD-XL TL disc that can store up to 100GB. There is still a lot of data on one disk!
Ultra HD 4K BD-ROM
Finally, the Blu-ray Disc Association announced in late 2015 that the new 4K Blu-ray disc format will support Ultra HD 4K video at up to 60 frames per second. If you haven’t heard of UHD yet, google it.
Basically, 4K TVs are selling like crazy these days, but you may have come across a few that say you have to wait until 4K UDH TVs are available. This is because these new 4K TVs will support a wide dynamic range, allowing them to display more color, detail and brightness.
Sadly, these 4K high dynamic range kits won’t arrive until 2016 and will likely be much more expensive than your $ 700 Vizio 4K kit. However, according to people who have seen this, 4K high dynamic range makes a significant difference over 1080p, whereas many people say it is difficult to see the difference between the current set of 4K and 1080p, especially on TVs less than 65 inches
Of course, you have to spend a lot of money. To enjoy this stunning resolution, you’ll need a 4K high dynamic range TV, built-in 4K Blu-ray player coming in 2016, and new 4K UDH Blu-ray discs coming March 1, 2016.
There are 4K Blu-ray players currently on the market, but they are not native 4K, which means they just take a 1080p signal and upscale it to 4K. A built-in 4K player will set you back at least $ 400-600 in 2016, but will offer true 4K resolution (assuming you buy new 4K Blu-ray UHD discs).
Hopefully this will give you a little more information on Blu-ray technology and its future development. For most people, this applies to their movies and TVs, but also to those who have Blu-ray drives on their computers. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to comment. Enjoy!
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