Blu-ray is one of the new commercial mass consumer optical data disc formats. Developed by a consortium including; Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Walt Disney Pictures, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and several others (collectively the Blu-ray Disc Association [BDA]). The format can store up to 50 GB on a dual layer disc and 25 GB on a single layer disc making it ideal for high definition (HD) video storage and playback. Blu-ray devices use a new blue-violet laser to read and write data to the disc as opposed to the red laser used on previous (smaller capacity) optical discs such as the popular DVD and CD we use now. The Blu-ray discs are the same physical size as current optical media and can store more information by writing the concentric circles of data more closely together. The format is currently mainly popular in the retailing of commercial films and video games. The format has risen in popularity in part due to the mass appeal of the Sony Playstation 3 which has a Blu-ray disc drive as its central mass storage device. Technically speaking, Blu-ray supports many playback codecs, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (H.264) and SMPTE VC-1 (a version of Microsoft's Windows Media Video [WMV]) in video and audio codecs such as; LCPM (up to 8 channels), Dolby Digital (5.1), Dolby Digital Plus (DD+ 7.1), Dolby TrueHD (8 channels), DTS Digital Surround (5.1), DTS-HD Hi Res Audio (7.1) and DTS-HD Master Audio (8 channel). Also, while not required, many Blu-ray devices support a broadband Internet connection for loading or streaming external extra features and for authorizing managed copies of movies over your home network. The main competitor to Blu-ray in HD-DVD which offers a similar format with slightly less storage. Either, or both HD optical discs formats are expected to replace the current DVD format.

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