Why Blu-Ray Discs are Amazing

Optical discs are pretty great. They can store a good bit of data on a round, cheap piece of plastic. They certainly aren't perfect, though. They get scratched and broken and are a lot more vunerable than flash drives or say... VHS tapes. But, they're still pretty amazing.

For some odd reason, however, most of the world seems to be moving away from optical discs. Even though with proper care these things can last for years and years and years and years and et cetera years, everyone seems to think that their hard drive, solid state/flash drive, or floppy drive is much better. I guess people just want to rely on servers across the country to hold their valuable data.

The thing is, though.... they're cheap. Incredibly cheap. Amazingly cheap! Okay, maybe not THAT cheap, but they are an easy way of storing permanent data or selling things. After all, unless you have Google Fiber or a really fast connection, downloading things like 5GB games are a pain in the rear end. Actually, it's more like smelling a donkey's rear end, except the download still isn't complete when you wake up from your coma and the word "Downloading..." has been burned into your good ol' reliable CRT television.

But this isn't what this whole blog is about. No no no no... This is about Blu Ray discs. When the first laserdiscs came out, they were these enormous sewer plates that secretly held movies that you could watch if you bought a $25,000 dollar player. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but the things weren't cheap and they were about as big as a good plate. They eventually went extinct, and the era was called the Plate-lasareian period. Okay, seriously, just kidding.

Even though these dics held superior quality, the Walmart dads still puffed out their hairy eighties mustaches and said in a firm voice, "NO." So, years later, someone put their precious laser disc collection in the washing machine and then dryer, and they came out shrunken to around 12 cm. These were called compact discs. Mysteriously, more data could be held on these "compact" discs. But, seriously, they made smaller discs with more data storage - all using the same red laser.

The tech industry soon moved to these discs, storing music, movies, and even video games on them. After a while, McDonalds started putting more salt on their french fries and every one enjoyed them more. Uh, I meant to say: after a while, these discs kept getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, with some being made rewritable with even more storage capacity.

Now we're to the good part. A couple of years ago, Sony changed up the standard discs. Instead of using a red laser, they used a blue laser. This meant that the disc could hold more data than before, because the data could be written finer and closer together. Also, since DVDs turned people from the VHS era into scratch-a-holics, blu rays were given a special coating that resists scratches much more than normal CDs and DVDs.

Turns out, these discs are actually pretty amazing. I actually didn't care much for them at first because all the early adopters were actually technoligically-illiterate hippies who declared that "dah kwalatee is higha". Of course, this made all of us tech nerds out here do fifteen hundred face palms and reject the technology first-hand. The early adopters that were tech-literate obviously ignored the hippies and bought players anyways. Probably because they had enough money saved from not buying things like a laser disc player. Or life insurance.

The truth is, yes, blu ray discs can hold higher quality videos. But WHY though? Not because "they're the hip new things, maaan," but because they can hold more data (up to 25GB a side if I'm not mistaken). These discs are also more scratch resistant and actually feel pretty cool in your hands. The only downside is, most computers don't have built-in blu ray players and some companies are being quick to abandon optical media. Also, since we're still in the relatively early days of blu ray players, they cost a good bit more than DVDs and DVD players.

Plus, they're the hip snazz dawgs, maaan. 1080p, yolo, and whatnot. Alright, fine. I just really like the extra features of my Doctor Who blu-ray.

Maybe you learned a little bit of something from this article today. Then again, maybe you have a twisted sense of humor and you cried your eyes out laughing. Either way, I'm fine.

Have a great day, folks!