The blue laser has a shorter wavelength and hence can store more information on the same disk. One disk has the capacity of approx. 25GB or two hours of HDTV audio+video with 36Mbps.
According to Philips the blue ray disk (also called blu-ray) can be rotated at 10000 rpm, which will increase the data transfer rate.
This product has been launched in May 2003 in Japan only.
On Sep 1, 2003, JVC and Samsung announced their blue ray products on the IFA in Berlin, Germany. Both say that their products will be in the market only in 2005.
The blue-ray disk consortium contains Philips, Matsushita, Sony, Samsung, LG, Thomson, Pioneer, Hitachi, Sharp, and Mitsubishi
On January 12, 2004, Hewlett Packard and Dell announced support for the new standard.
See also