The Blu-ray Disc

From CD, to DVD, then now, the BD. It is currently competing with the HD-DVD format for wide adoption as the preferred next generation optical standard. So having the cool name, what's different with the Blu-ray Disc compared to a DVD anyway?

The answer is this: Just like a CD differs with the DVD, the BD is a new technology that uses a different method than a DVD or a CD when reading its data.

The name Blu-ray is derived from the blue-violet laser it uses to read and write to the chalcogenide disc. A Blu-ray Disc will be able to store substantially more data than a DVD, because of the shorter wavelength (405 nm) of the blue-violet laser (DVDs use a 650-nm-wavelength red laser and CDs an infrared 780 nm laser), which allows more information to be stored digitally in the same amount of space. In comparison to HD DVD, which also uses a blue laser, Blu-ray has more information capacity per layer (25 gigabytes instead of 15) but may initially be more expensive to produce.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu_ray

The Blu-ray standard was jointly developed by a group of consumer electronics and PC companies called the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), spearheaded by Sony.

More infos can be found about Blu-ray Disc on Blu-ray.com.