Blu-Ray And HD DVD Technology

Movies are finally ready to take advantage of the High Definition displays that have been in stores for years. DVDs brought us great picture and sound that created a boom in the television and home theater market. Display technology rapidly grew to bring us a picture that was twice as good as DVD quality video. The problem was that DVDs cannot store enough information to fit HD quality video and sound, until now. New technology has created a DVD that can store up to five times more information than before. This new technology comes in two formats called Blu-Ray and HD DVD. These two formats were created separately and they currently in competition with each other. They both use similar technology to bring HD quality video and sound, but they do have some differences.

The technology behind the two formats is based on the same optical technique that regular DVDs use. A laser is focused onto the surface of the disc and reads the digital information that is converted to video and sound. Blu-Ray and HD DVD incorporate a new colored laser that can be focused more precisely onto a smaller area of the disc. This allows there to be more information packed onto the same size disc. It’s like a record player using a smaller needle and lines are just moved together tighter towards the center, leaving more room on the outside for more information. The reason for having to fit the information onto the same size disc as a DVD is so that all optical discs created with older technologies will fit into the same reader. So a Blu-Ray or HD DVD player will play CD, DVD and their own discs. Because of their competition there are no players that will play Blu-Ray and HD DVD.
The main difference between the two formats is simply a matter of storage. HD DVDs can store 15GB; about three times as much as a DVD. A Blu-Ray disc can store 25GB which is about five times as much as a DVD. Both will have the same video resolution as of right now, but Blu-Ray has the potential to store better video when it is available. For now, extra space is used for movie extras like behind the scenes segments. Only time will tell if these formats will merge or fight it out to the end. History has shown us that one format usually prevails.

Latest Technology Invention – Archimedes May Be Back

What are you talking about? – Archimedes and latest technology invention in the same breath? For those not in the know – Archimedes was the ancient Greek’s most famous mathematician. He was the one who ran through the streets naked yelling “Eureka” (I have found it) when he solved a very important problem while sitting in his bath.

The latest technology invention is this – taking what most probably the latest and using it in a new way. Archimedes had scribed some of his theories on goat parchment somewhere between 287-212 B.C. Amazingly, this parchment has lived on – and in the middle ages a Monk scraped the papyrus and OVERWROTE Archimedes’ writings – (which was probably the best thing to happen – because the writings lived on (covered over) as a Christian prayer book – thus not subject to destruction by anti-science thinkers of the Dark Ages and beyond).

Without getting into the whole story – the manuscript has lived on to this day – where it was purchased at auction for about 2 million dollars, and then very graciously turned over to classicists and old book restorers. It was found that the prayer book had been written over some other writing.

Here is where the latest technology invention comes in. The experts were having trouble reading the underlying script, naturally. A physicist that worked with the Stanford Synchotron Radiation Laboratory – which runs the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center – just happened to get some info on the Archimedes project while at a conference.

This physicist studies spinach! His latest technology invention was studying how determine iron and other elements in spinach. He – through the info he received – found that the ink used by Archimedes would have iron as a base.

The next step was to contact the classicists and restorers of the manuscript and suggest using his tools (the Stanford accelerator) to scan the book like he did his spinach – and the iron content in the ink should stand out (even through the overwriting).

After over four years of preparation – the use of this latest technology invention was accomplished. The scanning of the document is being done as we speak [beginning August 4, 2006]. The results are pretty amazing – and are available online and with a webcam.

This is one of the first instances where classicists and language scholars and physicists (nuclear and other) have worked together on a project such as this. The concept is mind-boggling – two such diverse fields working together to bring one of mankind’s greatest minds back to life with his writings – which have been buried beneath prayers for thousand of years. This is truly a fascinating use of the latest technology invention.