Article

What is Blu-ray?

Blu-ray is a next-generation optical standard that uses a blue laser to write and read data instead of the red or infrared used by CD and DVD drives. Why is it spelled Blu instead of Blue? According to the Blu-ray Disc Association, the misspelling is intentional to allow for a distinctive registration of the trademark name. While it may be distinctive, the truth that common daily-used words like Blue cannot be trademarked.

Sony BWU-100A Blu-ray Drive

Sony's BWU-100A internal Blu-ray Disc rewritable drive is the first from the computer component manufacturer. In our testing, the drive can burn a full 25 Gigabyte (GB) single-sided Blu-ray disc in approximately 45 minutes. It is also a multi-format burner, meaning it can also write to single-layer DVD+R/+RW/RAM 4.7 GB discs and DVD+R Double/Dual Layer 8.5 GB Discs. It can also burn CDs. The drive includes a large 8MB of cache and retails for $750.

It is very easy to get mired in the technical details of the two next-generation high definition formats that are Blu-ray and HD DVD. This is high technology at its finest!

The data transfer rate of Blu-ray is 4.5 Megabytes per second (MB/s) at 1x. The Sony BWU-100A is a 2x BD drive, meaning its data transfer rate is 9MB/s. It reads DVD data equivalent to a 8X DVD-ROM drive (10.8MB/s max) and reads CD data equivalent to a 32X CD-ROM drive (4.6MB/s).

The high-end data capacities of Blu-ray discs are possible due to the usage of a blue laser instead of the red laser used in DVD and CD drives. A vastly improved lens specification allows for a much smaller and focused laser beam, that in turn enables higher density pits to be written to much smaller areas. Just as DVD increased the storage capacity of CDs by 5 to 10 times, Blu-ray does the same to DVD.

The Blu-ray Disc Association considers the data being placed "closer" to the laser lens as a feature; it creates less distortion, resulting in significantly improved tolerances, and ultimately more precision and data storage densities. However, many claim that placing data closer to the surface makes discs more susceptible to scratches, fingerprints, smudges, and dust contamination. A protective hard coating has been added to the surface of discs to combat these issues.

If you need more technical info than that, we suggest you visit the Blu-ray Disc Association or the Wikipedia Blu-ray page

Blu-ray vs. HD DVD

While it is easy to get lost in the technical aspects of Blu-ray, it is even easier to get completely lost in the details surrounding the daily battle of attrition between the two warring formats of Blu-ray and HD DVD.

According to the Blu-ray Disc Association, seven of eight major Hollywood studios support BD, while five of them are exclusive to Blu-ray technology. The Sony PlayStation 3 played a big factor in the adoption of Blu-ray; as of December 31, 2006, Sony had shipped 1,000,000 PS3 units. A press release issued in April, 2007 announced that Blu-ray Disc sales had surpassed the one million mark, and that they accounted for 70 percent of the high-definition movies sold during the first quarter of 2007.

A report by Understanding and Solutions, Ltd. (9/06) shows Blu-ray having a demand forecast of 1.15 million units in 2007, 3.35 million units in 2008, 7.8 million units in 2009, and 16.5 million units in 2010 -- out pacing HD DVD by 34% in 2007 and quickly growing to 100% saturation of the market by 2010. Blockbuster’s latest announcement of their intent to focus solely on Blu-ray may only increase those numbers.

Playing Blu-ray Movies

In true geek fashion, we opted to test an internal Blu-ray drive instead of a console-based Blu-ray player. In hindsight, this turned out to be a bit geekier than we considered, as setting up a media center PC with the HDCP (High Definition Copy Protection) hardware capabilities required to play Blu-ray movies was a bit more difficult than we had anticipated. But when the right parts came together, the payoff was well worth the effort.

Blu-ray Discs

The term BD stands for Blu-ray Disc. Single-layer discs can hold up to 25 Gigabytes (GB) of data. Blu-ray discs should last anywhere from 30 to 50 years.

BD-R is short for Blu-ray Disc Recordable; a write once disc. Once the disc is full, it cannot be erased and rewritten to.

BD-RE is short for Blu-ray Disc Rewritable. As the name implies, these discs can be erased and written over many times. Sony claims BD-RE can be written up to 1000 times.

BD-R DL stands for Blu-Ray Disc Recordable Double Layer. These discs can hold twice the amount of data, which equates to 50GB of data, without the need to flip the disc. According to Sony, Blu-ray technology has the possibility of reaching 200GB on a single disc.

Blu-ray Copy Protection

If it were up to the Blu-ray Disc Association and its members, you will not be able to make a backup of a copyrighted Blu-ray disc.

To ensure that people do not, Blu-ray discs are protected by digital rights management called Advanced Access Content System (AACS). Developed by the AACS Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA), its members include Disney, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Matsushita (Panasonic), Sony, Toshiba, and Warner Brothers.

As reported on GeekSpeak, there have been several successful attempts to crack the DRM scheme. Since then, a new copy protection scheme called BD+ has been created that takes protection one step further. Using a small virtual machine embedded in players, an executable on each disc is launched into the virtual machine space to monitor the decryption keys and to examine the player to ensure it has not been tampered with. Since the discs are continually updated, the BD+ code can be updated to combat new hacks to hardware.

The Bundle

Sony has included the CyberLink BD Solution software suite in the box. It is comprised of CyberLink PowerProducer, PowerDirector, Power2Go, PowerBackup, Medi@Show, InstantBurn, LabelPrint and PowerDVD BD.

Impressions

We will add to this article in the coming weeks with more information about our testing along with impressions of Blu-ray technology, the Sony BWU-100A drive, and the software that drives it.