The term "Blu-ray disc recordable" will soon be entering the consciousness of technophiles worldwide as this new media format becomes increasingly affordable and viable for the individual consumer. It refers to a pair of media formats that can be created using specialized Blu-ray optical disc recording equipment. The acronyms used to describe these formats are BD-R and BD-RE. Read More

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We were asked the other day about the advantages and disadvantages of CD-R or DVD recordable disc. 

This certainly is not an easy answer with all the various types of data storage available today.

CD-R and DVD-R and DVD+R are 'Write Once, Read Many' formats.  This capability is called "WORM' for short.

 This means you can only write to the disc once (or in multi-session several times to different locations on the disc before finalizing).

This is unlike other formats used for hard drives, flash memory, backup tape and certain optical formats like the +RW and -RW in DVD recordable that can be erased and re written hundreds or millions of times (in disc based hard drives).

A CD-R or recordable DVD provides an "archive", or permanent record of the data copied.  That is it's main advantage over all other types of data storage.

Disc longevity compliments the WORM feature by protecting the data for 100 years or more.  This is where a quality disc surpasses the bargain disc.  Bargain discs life span can be in days instead of years.

The disadvantages of recordable discs are numerous.  

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Blu-ray recordable Technology offers high storage capacity: 25 Gigabytes on single layer Blu-ray Disc media (BD-R & BD-RE) and 50 Gigabytes on dual layer BD-R media. Blu-ray recordable is compatible with players and computer drives that read standard Blu-ray discs and offers both large storage capacity and high definition capabilities.

Blu-ray recorders and duplication systems offer the convenience of producing your own Blu-ray titles and spares the expense of some mandatory copy protection schemes that are required in BD-ROM production.

Best of all Blu-ray duplicators can still copy DVDs and CDs.  In fact one gets all four formats (including DVD+R) with Blu-ray multi-format duplication systems.

Blu-ray duplicators can be divided into two categories:

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What makes recordable Blu-ray so much better then DVD?

Blu-ray technology uses a violet-blue laser which operates at a higher frequency then the red laser that DVD relies on. This allows for the information (or pits) to be placed closer together on the same sized disc as DVD. This change of lasers requires additional lasers for backwards compatibility with DVD and CD. When the laser 'writes' it is causing a change in the dye layer to turn dark in a precise spot which represents one 0/1 binary bit of information. So the closer they can be 'burned' the greater amount of information can be stored.

Unlike the past format releases (DVD specifically) consumers do not have to face the decision of upgrading to a new format and casting aside their current library. Blu-ray readers and recorders have been designed to provide full support for the older formats.

With the growing demand for high-definition video Blu-ray disc provides an excellent choice for the consumer. Even better is the fact that a recordable Blu-ray format exists that allows for recording your favorite shows in high-definition. Both write-once and rewritable Blu-ray disc media exists in 25GB and dual layer 50GB capacity. Re-writable allows you to erase the disc so you can use the same one over and over again.

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