Uses for High Defintion Media

There are several exciting applications for this new breed of optical disc. Keep reading to find out more...

	Playback of pre-recorded High Definition movies The first, and possibly the most obvious is that movie studios in Hollywood and elsewhere will be able to offer movies in High Definition, to get the very best out of the new plasma and LCD TV technology that is becoming more and more popular. This is likely to have the same effect on home viewing that was seen with the advent of widescreen TVs and surround sound systems, and will breathe new life into the world of home entertainment.
	Long play standard definition movies and TV show collections Currently, if you were to buy Lord of the Rings, Return of the King this would be supplied on 4-DVDs and Seinfeld, the 3rd Season, is sold as an 8-DVD set. These would both fit onto a single Blu-ray disc! Reduced packaging and fewer discs means lower costs, less waste and it’s much easier to find the parts you want to watch.
	Recording high definition TV TV stations have begin to broadcast programs in High Definition. Recording onto the new high definition formats preserves the massive amounts of additional information contained in the transmission and allows you to enjoy the benefits of high definition broadcasts on playback. These programs can be recorded onto standard definition discs, of course, using existing equipment, but on playback, the results will be standard definition.
	Advanced gaming experiences The games industry has split in terms of its support for the two formats: Sony, of course is firmly in the Blu-ray camp, whereas Microsoft’s X-box will base its future development on the HD DVD platform. The creators of these games will use the higher capacity and faster bit rates of HD DVD and Blu-ray to produce gaming experiences far in excess of what we currently experience. Graphic environments will be richer and more detailed and in-game interactivity will be greatly enhanced. Combining the inherent improvement in interactivity through advanced disc technology with ever-increasing bandwidth of broadband services will lead to a huge increase in the possibility for sophisticated network playability.
	Advanced interactivity The new formats will offer advanced interactivity through their own separate technologies. While HD DVD discs will use iHD software to achieve interactive features such as a small screen with a movie director which can be overlaid onto the main screen, Blu-ray will include the Java virtual machine. This will allow more interactive menus than the hard-coded mpeg 2 menus that we are currently familiar with, as well as updates to Blu-ray discs via the Internet, adding content such as additional subtitle languages and promotional features that were not included on the disc at production time.
	Storage of data and software Once the excitement of High Definition TV, movies and hyper-real games has died down slightly, there is still a very good reason to invest in this new technology. That is because it is now possible to store up to 50GB, that’s over 10 times the capacity of a standard DVD, on one Blu-ray disc, or 30GB on HD DVD. Combining this with Imation’s highly innovative Disc Stakka, where 100 discs can be archived and retrieved with amazing ease, offers a low cost, low maintenance storage solution of up to 5 terabytes. That’s a lot of data.