Blu-ray Wave: State of the Technology (page 2)
Burners
So you've shot your HD movie, designed a drop-dead gorgeous Blu-ray Disc and picked up some blank Blu-ray Discs, now how do you get what you dreamed up onto that disc?
A variety of internal Blu-ray Disc burners has been slowly popping up on the market, though, depending on your system configuration, you may or may not be ready for that upgrade yet. Another possibility is that drivers for some brands just may not exist for your system. An internal burner from a major provider will run you upwards of $500. I definitely encourage you to do a little research or wait before going this route; you could end up saving yourself some money and headaches in the end.
External burners are a popular solution, because they don't require installing anything into a computer, and you know that, if you have the proper connections and meet the requirements, it'll work. Usually the downside is that the external burners are often more expensive than internal.
During researching, I used the new LaCie d2 external Blu-ray Disc drive for all my testing. The LaCie d2 offers both FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 connections, works on both Windows and Mac computers and retails for $649. The burner supports both 25GB single-layer discs and 50GB dual-layer discs, which is great for future-proofing your setup. It also supports BD-RE discs, which are re-writable Blu-ray Discs. The d2 is also backwards-compatible with practically every CD and DVD standard you can dream up, so it's a great solution for all your burning needs. Another bonus is that it ships with Toast Titanium 8 and Easy Media Creator, so regardless of whether you're running on Windows or Mac, you'll be set up for data burning and basic Blu-ray Disc authoring right out of the box.
The d2 doubles writing speeds of previously-available burners, clocking in at 4x write speed. The d2 also supports playback of commercially-made Blu-ray Discs, as long as your system supports it. Similar to Encore, the LaCie d2 is proving itself to be not only the best external burning solution but also one of the only currently-available solutions.
The State of the Technology
With the format war ending only months ago, there are few options in the Blu-ray Disc creation market. It is an incredibly young technology, and those companies who took a risk supporting it now stand out as forerunners in the new medium. Expect there to be leaps and bounds in the development of Blu-ray delivery. With HD DVD now fading out of sight, developers will speed down the Blu-ray Disc path with nothing distracting their view.
Nathan Beaman is an Apple Certified Final Cut Pro 6, Level 2 Apple Certified XSAN for Pro Video and Apple Certified Motion Graphics Trainer.
Side Bar: Blu-ray BD-J
Features
- GUI framework ideal for remote control user interface decoding and displaying JPEG, PNG and other images
- Vector-based text rendering from disc or network access
- Java 2 security module for permissions
- Java network package with TCP/IP support including HTTP protocol
Advantages
- Highly interactive games and menus (frame accurate event handling)
- Downloads: new media, current movie previews, foreign subtitles, etc.
- Online shopping: new and related titles
- Read/write to local storage
- Access other Java applications for further interactivity
