News Tecnology for Home Video

Blu-ray

The name Blu-ray Disc is derived from the blue-violet laser used to read and write this type of disc. Because of its shorter wavelength (405 nm), substantially more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on the DVD format, which uses a red, 650 nm laser. A Blu-ray Disc can store 25 GB on each layer, as opposed to a DVD's 4.7 GB.
Blu-ray Disc is similar to PDD, another optical disc format developed by Sony (which has been available since 2004) but offering higher data transfer speeds. PDD was not intended for home video use and was aimed at business data archiving and backup.
Blu-ray Disc is currently in a "format war" with rival format HD DVD.

Hd Dvd

The HD DVD disc is designed to be the successor to the standard DVD format. It can store about three times as much data as its predecessor (15 GB per layer instead of 4.7 GB). The HD DVD standard was jointly developed by Toshiba and NEC. On 19 November 2003, the DVD Forum voted to support HD DVD as the high definition successor of the standard DVD. At this meeting, they also renamed it HD DVD. The format had previously been called the "Advanced Optical Disc" (AOD).
At CES 2006, Microsoft announced that there would be an external add-on HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360 game console; this was released in November 2006. Also at CES 2006, companies backing HD DVD said that nearly 200 titles would be available for the format by the end of the year.
On 31 March 2006, Toshiba released their first HD DVD player in Japan at ¥110,000 ($934). HD DVD was released in United States on 18 April 2006, with players priced at $499 and $799.
The current specification version for HD DVD-ROM and HD DVD-Rewritable is version 1.0. The specification for HD DVD-R is currently at 0.9, the HD DVD-RAM is not yet fully finalized. The first HD DVD-ROM drives were expected to be unveiled by Q4 2006, with mass production to start in Q1 2007. The actual product launch of both CE and PC units occurred in late 2006.
HD DVD is currently in a format war with rival format Blu-ray Disc.
HD DVD stands for "High Definition Digital Versatile Disc".

fonte: www.wikipedia.com