The Blu-ray disc association
Organisation acting on behalf of the development of Blu-ray mediums, established by ten electronics industry companies in February 2002.
Its creation was an answer to the structure supporting the development of HD technology – the DVD Forum. The following belong to the initiators of the association’s establishment:
• Matsushita,
• Pioneer,
• Phillips,
• Thomson,
• LG Electronics,
• Hitachi,
• Sharp,
• Samsung,
• Sony
The organisation was originally known as the Blu-ray Disc Founders. Not until 2004 did the signatories adopt the official name for the group created by them – the Blu-ray Disc Association. With the passing of time new firms joined the founding group (amongst others Mitsubishi Electric, Dell, HP, TDK). The Blu-ray Disc Association currently totals over 250 members. They all take actions for the benefit of the support and development of Blu-ray and promote it, so that it should become a product in common use.
The Blu-ray format allows recording and reading of up to approx. 27GB of data on a single-sided disk of standard CD diameter, through the use of a laser of 405nm wavelength (blue-violet).
After the addition of a second layer, the capacity of a Blu-ray disc increases to approx. 50 GB. A two-hour high quality film or 13 hours of television quality film (VHS/standard picture quality, 3.8 Mb/s) can then be contained on it.
However, not all the specifications of the Blu-ray Disc are universally available. The complete technology is described in the special “Specification Disclosure” as a part of the Intellectual Property and Standards Division of Phillips, and access to this is priced at approx. 5 thousand dollars.