Have you gone to buy a DVD player and have been offered a Blu-ray ? Is it a mess in the movie section? If you are still wondering what Blu-ray is and if it is worth buying, at tuexperto.com we have prepared this guide to get up to speed quickly and easily.
What is Blu-ray?
Blu-ray is an optical disc format, an evolution of CD and DVD . Like these, it has the same size and external appearance, but multiplies the capacity of the disk. To give you an idea, about 800MB of information can be stored on a normal CD, while on a DVD the figure can be around 5GB. On a single layer Blu-ray, we can store about 25 GB of information. At a volume like this, it can fit about 27,000 minutes of music in MP3 format , the most widely used on the net.
And this in a single layer, because another of the most interesting virtues of this format is that it can support several, multiplying its capacity. Thus, we can find Blu-ray discs of up to 100 GB capacity . If we measure it in minutes of music, this would be about 108,000.
It appeared in 2008, and little by little it is displacing DVD in some sectors. However, it has not been as successful as expected.
What is Blu-ray for?
Well, as you can imagine , it is used to store large amounts of information. Anyone who has a recorder of this format can create discs in which to include music, video, files, etc. It is a storage unit like any other. And like CDs and DVDs, single-use versions are sold (cheaper) or discs that can be burned and erased multiple times.
What is Blu-ray normally used for?
This format has the same advantages and disadvantages as DVD, only with greater capacity. It is relatively cheap to produce, it can store a large amount of information and so on. It is the ideal format to sell high definition movies. In fact, format is sometimes confused with content. It is not uncommon to hear "I bought a movie on Blu-ray ", as if it were a high quality video format. In reality, what you buy are high definition movies, stored on a Blu-ray disc .
Thanks to their enormous capacity, they can store a movie in high definition, with the enormous amount of information that this implies, and leave free space for extras.
Another of the uses that this format has found are video games . One of the most famous and advanced consoles, the PS3, uses games in this format. In addition, it is capable of reading any Blu-ray disc , which is why many people have acquired it for a double purpose: a game console and a video player. Blu-ray is well suited to video games with a lot of graphic load.
Is it worth buying a Blu-ray player?
Well, like everything in life: it depends . Blu-ray is not having the same success as DVD or VHS in its day . The reason is that today, the trend to download movies (legally or illegally), smart TV over the Internet , and the popularization of memory cards is growing. The fact of going to a store to buy or rent a movie is falling into disuse, and with it optical discs.
However, there are still many consumers who prefer to have their collection of original films. In this case, Blu-ray players have made their price quite cheap, and this is necessarily the format that will replace DVD . Therefore, if we are lovers of buying and storing our movies near the TV, a Blu-ray player can be a good investment for the future.