30-12-2010, 01:50 PM
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ABSTRACT
Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc video recording format jointly developed by nine leading consumer electronics companies. The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HDTV). Blu-ray makes it possible to record over 2 hours of digital high-definition video (HDTV) or more than 13 hours of standard-definition video (SDTV/VHS picture quality) on a 27GB disc. There are also plans for higher capacity discs that are expected to hold up to 50GB of data.
The Blu-ray Disc technology can store sound and video while maintaining high quality and also access the stored content in an easy-to-use way. Adoption of the Blu-ray Disc in a variety of applications including PC data storage and high definition video software is being considered.
INTRODUCTION
Blu-ray is a new optical disc standard based on the use of a blue laser rather than the red laser of today’s DVD players. The standard, developed collaboratively by Hitachi, LG, Matsushita (Panasonic), Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Thomson, threatens to make current DVD players obsolete. It is not clear whether new Blu-ray players might include both kinds of lasers in order to be able to read current CD and DVD formats.
The new standard, developed jointly in order to avoid competing standards, is also being touted as the replacement for writable DVDs The blue laser has a 405 nanometer (nm) wavelength that can focus more tightly than the red lasers used for writable DVD and as a consequence, write much more data in the same 12 centimeter space Like the rewritable DVD formats, Blu-ray uses phase change technology to enable repeated writing to the disc.
Blu-ray’s storage capacity is enough to store a continuous backup copy of most people’s hard drives on a single disc. The first products will have a 27 gigabyte (GB) single-sided capacity, 50 GB on dual-layer discs. Data streams at 36 megabytes per second (Mbps), fast enough for high quality video recording Single-sided Blu-ray discs can store up to 13 hours of standard video data, compared to single-sided DVD’s 133 minutes. People are referring to Blu-ray as the next generation DVD, although according to Chris Buma, a spokesman from Philips (quoted in New Scientist) “Except for the size of the disc, everything is different.”
Blu-ray discs will not play on current CD and DVD players, because they lack the blue-violet laser required to read them. If the appropriate lasers are included, Blu-ray players will be able to play the other two formats.
CD-ROM
Data bits are permanently stored on a CD as a spiral track of physically molded pits in the surface of a plastic data layer that is coated with reflective aluminum. Smooth areas surrounding pits are called lands. CDs are extremely durable because the optical pickup (laser light source, lenses and optical elements, photoelectric sensors, and amplifiers) never touches the disc. Because data is read through the thick bottom layer, most scratches and dust on the d surface are out of focus, so they do not interfere with the reading process.
With a 650-MB storage capacity (sometimes expressed as ‘74 minutes,’ referring to audio playing time encoded in the original CD format), one CD-ROM disc can store the data from more than 450 floppy disks. Data access speeds are reasonable, with random access rates ranging from 80 to 120 ms for any data byte on the disc. Maximum data transfer rates are approximately 6 MB/sec. These attributes make CD-ROMs especially well suited for storing large multimedia presentations and software programs.
CD-ROM drives are distinguished by different disc rotation speeds measured relative to the speed of an audio CD player. A 1X CD-ROM accesses data at approximately 150 KB/sec, the same as an audio player. A 32 X CD-ROM reads data thirty-two times faster at approximately 4,800 KB/sec. In general, faster speeds reduce data access time, but vibration and noise problems limit maximum speeds to approximately 48X.
