July 23, 2009; In which I discuss things everyone should already know

Blu-Ray. What is it? What's it do? What's it good for? Why should anyone care at all?

Allow me to tell you.

Blu-Ray is the disc format that "won" the high definition war, and is also the format that Playstation 3 games are printed on. I use the term printed lightly, but you get what I mean. Now, as for the competition (read "everything else") there exists almost exclusively the DVD. Whether it's the DVD-5, a five gigabyte disc, or a DVD-9, the becoming-more-common nine gig disc, neither one has nearly as much space as the Blu-Ray disc (twenty-five gigabytes of space on a single-layered disc, fifty for a double). Now you have a very basic understanding of that. And, we move on to the questions I presented above.

What does a BD-DVD do that a regular DVD doesn't? Well, aside from high definition video and massive space, Blu-Ray allows for a much more interactive movie experience. Most Blu-Ray movies have an interactive in-film menu that lets you open it while you watch to change any setting on the fly, or watch with an enhanced experience through various features. Movies aside, the real kicker comes in gaming. On a Blu-Ray disc, there are up to fifty gigabytes of space for content. That means the high definition, expansive, massive worlds that are created go onto a Blu-Ray with much less compression and a much easier-to-read format. As games get bigger, with more to the experience and intensely massive content, it can take multiple DVDs to hold one game as opposed to one Blu-Ray.

Why should you care? Maybe you shouldn't. If you aren't a gamer or a movie-lover, it probably means nothing at all to you. If you like movies or games or tech, then you probably already know most of the stuff I just wrote, and that's great. Buuuuuut... That's about it. That's all I gotta say.