Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Thin Blu-ray Line

By James Gilbert Pynn

There, lurking underneath the floorboards, and just around the proverbial corner, is the mighty and much ballyhooed Blu-ray disc! Its a powerful new disc, virtually identical to the CD disc were come to know and love. The big difference? They tend to be, wellblue. The only significant difference is in the reading of the laser-encoded data. The reading? Fear not, my friend, come closer and listen. Just as every dawn has its day, so too, does every disc have its own kind of reader.

It was the rage some years ago to fashion a massive battle royale between the HD DVD and the Blu-ray disc, it was glaringly obvious that nothing could compare to our azure friend. The best HD discs couldnt hold a candle to the Blu-ray's data storage capacity or even its audio or video transfer rates. When Sony enabled their PS3 line with Blu-ray readers, it was the end of HD DVDs. Such is war, so to speak.

The powers behind the Blu-ray revolution include some of the biggest of big technological house, including Apple, Sony, and Dell. Yes, that's right. These powers converged around this little disc because it utilizes a revolutionary blue-violet laser to read the disc. That's right: a blue laser. The blue spectrum provides a more detailed video image and its narrow focus allows more information to be encoded on the disc. In fact, it can hold twice the information on one disc than an ordinary HD disc. Say goodbye to the double-DVD movies.

Hang on to your ego, little one, for the sheer amount of choices Blu-ray makes available to you and your family is staggering. Over the past two years the Blu-ray catalog of films has tripled. Though most studios are release their home entertainment features on both DVD and Blu-ray, the future is exclusively blue. Seven of the big eight studios, including Disney, will be releasing future films exclusively on Blu-ray. This means the still relatively expensive Blu-ray readers will be dropping in price. It's the CD change-over all over again.

To wit, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Pinocchio, Disney is releasing the definitive Blu-ray edition on March 10, 2009. It will feature a richer, more detailed version of the beloved classic and is said to have a wealth of previously unreleased bonus material, hence the second disc. The list of exclusive Disney DVDs that will make the Blu-ray conversion grows every day! So, start making the switch to big blue as soon as you can afford it. Your eyeballs will thank me later. - 16651

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