Physical media has now been largely replaced by digital alternatives. Streaming services dominate the film and television markets, while platforms such as Steam or console-specific online stores are used for gaming. This is a relatively recent phenomenon, made possible only by better global Internet availability and better online compression methods. Before that, if you wanted to watch something at your leisure, you had to own a physical disc or VHS tape.
Digital Versatile Discs (DVDs) and Blu-ray Discs were the most recent major physical media format before the standard began to fade away. Both store data in binary – in values of zeros and ones. To achieve this, each disc has an outer reflective layer with tiny, precise recesses. When the laser in your DVD or Blu-ray player reads the disc, it only reflects off this reflective layer and not where there is a dip. Each reflection represents a one in binary, and each absence of reflection represents a zero.
DVDs use infrared or red light to do this, while Blu-ray discs, as their name suggests, use blue-violet light. Since blue-violet light has a much shorter wavelength than red light, it can read smaller, more precise spaces inside the disk. This is why Blu-ray discs can store much more data than DVDs, even though they are the same physical size. The companies behind the two formats also differ. Sony and Philips are among the forums behind both, but Toshiba and Time Warner only participated on DVD, while industry giants like Panasonic and LG, among others, contributed to Blu-ray.
Is Blu-ray better than DVD?
Blu-ray discs were not a direct successor to DVD. This was a rival format that existed for a while alongside traditional DVDs. The Blu-ray was an improvement over the basic DVD in every area. A traditional DVD can hold a maximum of 4.7 GB of data on a single layer because it does not use blue-violet light, while a Blu-ray disc has a base capacity of up to 25 GB. Similarly, while DVDs only supported 480p resolutions, Blu-ray discs could offer 1080p instead.
This is only when comparing Blu-ray discs with the basic DVD format that hit the market in 1996. The reason why Blu-ray replaced DVD is more nuanced than that, as the HD DVDs (high-density digital versatile discs) released later had most of the advantages of Blu-ray. They used blue-violet light, could hold up to 15 GB of data per layer, and offered the same 1080p resolution as Blu-ray discs.
One of the obvious reasons why Blu-ray discs won is their increased capacity. 25 GB versus 15 GB already seems like a big difference, but the reality was even more significant. Full HD movies and large open-world games often required more than 80 GB, which neither format supported. To combat this, both technologies have opted for multiple layers on the drives, essentially doubling or tripling the capacity. A dual-layer disc can hold up to 50 GB, while a triple-layer disc can hold 75 GB, but an HD DVD disc can only hold 30 GB or 45 GB, even with these extra layers.
DVD and Blu-ray today
Neither DVDs nor Blu-rays are particularly popular today. Streaming services are much more convenient for the average user. While a single movie can cost around $25 on Blu-ray, you can get a Netflix subscription starting at $8.99 per month and enjoy thousands of different movies and series, old and new. Add to that the high price of a 4K Blu-ray player, and it makes perfect sense why most would prefer streaming.
However, that doesn’t mean streaming is superior in every way. Even though they seem outdated, Blu-rays offer better visuals than any online streaming platform. Standard Blu-ray discs have a resolution of 1080p, the same as Netflix’s standard tier. But the more premium Ultra HD Blu-ray standard offers 4K resolution (thanks to up to 100GB of storage), matching Netflix’s more premium subscription plans. The numbers look the same, but resolution isn’t everything that makes something display well on your screen.
The main reason Blu-ray offers better visuals than streaming, even at the same resolution, is bitrate and compression. While resolution refers to the number of pixels displayed at any given time, bit rate refers to the amount of data processed each second. Netflix gives you a maximum bitrate of 20 megabits per second (Mbps) when streaming in 4K. The standard Blu-ray disc offers much more than that, often up to 40 Mbps, and Ultra HD Blu-ray discs completely demolish streaming with bit rates above 100 Mbps. This makes Blu-rays the optimal choice for movie fans wanting the best viewing experience, and is the reason why new releases are still being released on a seemingly outdated medium.
