Looking into Blu Ray media for Recording Videos

I have just completed a quick foray into the world of Blu Ray players and writers. Examples of the difference between Blu Ray and DVD images have (example below) intrigued me for some time. So I bit the bullet and invested in a player (which also plays ordinary DVDs) and a BD disc drive.

To find out more about the media I trawled the internet and found heaps of information – especially on Wikipedia. Most of it I didn’t understand and it turned out I really didn’t need to. What I did glean was that the blue ray laser technology (DVD uses a red laser) allows more information to be recorded on the disc and there is more data available to form each image and thus a better quality picture is produced on screen. An ordinary DVD has the data compressed leaving less available to form a picture.

For a comparison between Blue Ray and DVD's click the following link.

http://www.generalforum.com/technology/blu-ray-vs-dvd-side-side-picture-comparisons-52060.html

Well, you probably know all that so let’s look at how I fared with my purchases. Firstly, I bought a Blu Ray player from the Warehouse – on special at $60. Most players range from $100 to $250 and I really don’t know if the more expensive ones are any better. But my machine worked beautifully and coupled with the full HD 38” TV the result was very satisfying.

Next, I looked for a Blu Ray burner. There were plenty of cheap ones on line but freight costs brought them up to nearly the cost of buying locally. So I did and for under $200 I had a slim line drive that could burn CDs, DVD, and Blu Ray discs (BD). Luckily the editing software I have will burn Blu Ray discs

The discs were expensive locally so I searched the internet and bought some for around $4 each. Not too bad considering they have a capacity of 25Gb (double layer 50Gb) and produce twice the quality.

I burned about a dozen of my old videos onto a disc (BD-R), and with trembling fingers put it into the player and pressed ‘PLAY’. It all worked perfectly. I’m really sold on the system. I see Auckland MovieMakers Inc accept Blu Ray recordings for their competitions. Perhaps we should be looking at this too!

Gio Angelo