Blu ray technology simply known as blu ray disk (BD) is a next generation computer storage technology that is applied to the optical disk. To explain the blu ray technology one must first understand how it was created. BD was created jointly by the leading players in the field of electronics, computers and media from over 180 companies that formed the Blu Ray Disk association (BDA) the likes of Apple, Hitachi Dell and HP, Samsung electronics, LG Electronics ,Sun Microsystems, Walt Disney Pictures and Warner Bros. Entertainment to name but a few.

This format of recording equipment was created out of the need to enable the high resolution or quality that lacked in other mediums of storage when recording data and information. It was thus created to hold more data up to 5 times as much as traditional DVDs and CDs that is it can hold up to 25 GB of data at any one time on a single layer disk and double that on a double layered disk!

The name ‘blu ray’ is derived from its use of the blue laser ray in encoding data being different to the red laser ray that is used by all the other recording mediums. Since the blu ray is of a shorter wave length than the red it is able to fit more data into the same amount of disk space thus maximizing the disk space better than red laser ray. One has to appreciate the wonders of modern technology to be able to appreciate the flexibility of BD technology. The flexibility of BD technology is so great that it can be made compatible to all the other existing technologies by means of a compatible optical pickup unit.

Although the discovery and development phase of the blue ray technology has been completed, research is still going on to come up with ways of improving the existing technology and also to stretch its applicability and compatibility with the other technologies. The factor that explains the blu ray technology advantage to consumers and end users who have blu ray compatible equipment is they don’t have to keep switching to DVD compliant players as BD players can play the regular DVD’s and CD’s just as well. Development of technical support for BD has been carried out hand in hand with the development of the storage media themselves which has worked to facilitate introduction of the product in the consumer market place.

Blu Ray technology has revolutionized the media industry and the communication capabilities of the world at large. The film and movie makers have adopted this technology with a lot of gusto applying as the standard technology for production. Their action best explains the blu ray technology and its impact on modern communication. Other fundamental uses for blu ray have been in medical diagnostics where it has been used to provide clarity and high definition results for such equipment as brain scans. It has also been used in micro projectors and other scanning equipment used in environmental monitoring.