Blu-ray is here to stay, but do you have the technology for it?

The idea of being reliant on physical media such as tapes and discs to store music, videos and computer software is fast evaporating, as more and more people turn to the internet as a way to (legally or otherwise) download the latest tunes, movies and programs.

Even so, the Blu-ray disc format is finding a fair few fans. Intended to usurp the ever-present DVD format, Blu-ray discs can store the vast quantities of data demanded by high-definition (HD) movies and games. But is the Blu-ray format useful to PC owners? Read on to find out.

What is Blu-ray?
Just like DVD and CD before it, the Blu-ray disc – or ‘BD’ – is a data-storage medium that consists of a 12cm disc with one or more metallic layers inside its protective plastic coating. The metallic layers use microscopic pits to represent bits of computer data, which are read by a laser in a BD drive.

The key advantage of Blu-ray is its capacity. The technology uses a blue laser that has a much shorter wavelength than the red lasers used in CD and DVD drives. That means the pits on the metallic layers can be much smaller, which in turn means that discs can store much more data.

As a result, a basic single-layer (i.e. one metallic layer with pits on one side) BD can store 25GB of data, while a dual-layer disc can store 50GB. A dual-layer DVD, for comparison, holds 8.5GB of data.

Blu-ray was released commercially in 2006 as a read-only storage medium to carry high-definition movies. A two-hour HD movie, for instance, takes up 35GB for the video alone.

Add in a surround-sound soundtrack in one or more languages and a bunch of behind-the-scenes extras, and it is easy to see why DVD wasn’t a worthy format for the HD revolution.

Incidentally, although they’re technically possible, double-sided BDs aren’t yet available, as content publishers – that’s movie companies, in the main – don’t yet need the increased capacity they offer over dual-layer discs. Besides, double-sided discs leave no room for a label, as both sides need to be left blank to be read by the drive’s laser.

However, triple-layer Blu-ray discs for computer use went on sale earlier this year, at £100 for each 100GB disc. You’ll see these referred to as BD-RE XL (meaning Blu-ray Disc Recordable Xtra Large, basically), though few drives currently support them.

Blu-ray for PCs
Although home Blu-ray players for HD movies are the most popular use of the format, Blu-ray disc drives are also available for PCs. Both internal and external drives are available, with BD-Rom (read-only) models costing around £50 and BD-RE (recordable) around £65.

Internal drives are no more difficult to install than DVD or hard disk drives but older PCs may lack the necessary Sata connection used by newer drives and will instead require a model with an IDE port.

External drives obviously require no installation at all. A similar proviso applies though, since some external drives are available with faster USB3 ports – something that’s still far from standard on new PCs.

A USB3 drive will still work when connected to a USB2 or USB1 port, but just won’t be as quick at transferring data. It’s also worth noting that a BD drive will still read (and write, if it’s BD-RE) CDs and DVDs, so it can replace an existing disc drive.

The speed of the connection makes little difference to a BD-Rom drive that’s only used for reading discs (which usually means playing movies) but it can be an issue for burning them.

As with CDs and DVDs, BD burning is rated at different speeds and a single-speed drive writes data at 36Mbit/sec. In lay terms, that means a single-layer 25GB Blu-ray disc will take around 90 minutes to fill, while a double-speed drive would do the same job in 45 minutes – and so on.

What do I need?
Windows 7 and Vista (with Service Pack 2 installed) include the necessary driver for reading and writing Blu-ray data discs with a BD drive, but both require the appropriate codec to be installed before they can play BD movies. This will usually be supplied with a BD drive as part of the accompanying disc-burning software and allows you to watch movies using Windows Media Player.

Windows XP, on the other hand, has no built-in knowledge of Blu-ray; though again, the BD driver and codec will be supplied with a new drive, so XP computers can make use of Blu-ray.

Any computer with a Pentium 4 processor – the chip that acts as the brain of the PC – or better should be powerful enough to play Blu-ray movies, but desktop PCs must have a graphics card that supports High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection if they’re connected to a monitor via a DVI cable.

Otherwise, a HDMI connection between the desktop graphics card and the display is required, or a low-quality VGA connection be used. These issues shouldn’t concern laptop owners, unless they wish to output the content of a Blu-ray to an external monitor or TV.

Burning computer data to Blu-ray discs is straightforward but making your own Blu-ray movies is a processor-intensive task that could take a long time, even with a modern computer – and beyond our scope here.

Stay cost-effective
When it comes to PCs, the Blu-ray format is still best considered as a way to play movie discs, as blank media is still comparatively expensive (even bought in bulk, single-layer 25GB discs cost upwards of £2 each, compared to just a few pence for blank DVDs).