HD and Blu-ray DVD Replication

HD DVD (High Density Digital Versatile Disc or
High Definition Digital Video Disc)

A digital optical media format which is being developed as one standard for high-definition DVD. HD DVD is similar to the competing Blu-ray Disc, which also uses the same CD-size (120 mm diameter) optical data storage media and 405 nm wavelength blue laser. HD DVD is promoted by Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, and, most recently, Microsoft, HP [1], and Intel.

HD DVD has a dual-layer capacity of 30 GB and a single-layer capacity of 15 GB. Toshiba has announced a triple-layer disc which offers 45GB of storage. HD DVD can offer both the current DVD and HD DVD formats on one disc, which means that special HD DVD discs will play in any DVD player, old or the new high definition players. Blu-ray does not. This makes retail marketing and shelf space management easier. For consumers shopping is simplified as they can simply buy a movie that plays in any DVD player in their house, standard definition or high definition. The HD DVD format also can be applied to current red laser DVDs in 5, 9, 15 and 18 GB capacities which offers an even lower cost option to content owners wanting to sell short form content. Blu-ray does not work with red laser discs.

Blu-ray Disc (BD)

A next-generation optical disc format meant for high-density storage of high-definition video and data. The Blu-ray standard was jointly developed by a group of consumer electronics and PC companies called the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). It is currently competing with the HD DVD format for wide adoption as the prefered next generation optical standard.

The name Blu-ray is derived from the blue-violet laser it uses to read and write to the 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 780 nm), 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.