Not only are these discs not compatible with standard Blu-ray burners, they cannot even be read by regular Blu-ray players. In 2016, the Blu-ray Disc Association launched the Ultra HD Blu-ray format, designed for even higher data density in order to take better advantage of the increasingly popular 4K UHD standard. However, in 2010, the Blu-ray XL format was released, capable of storing 100 gigabytes of data on a rewritable disc. Almost all Blu-ray burners will be capable of writing to the most common Blu-ray disc types, which are the 25 gigabyte single layer and the 50 gigabyte double layer. Formatsīlu-ray is no longer a single format, and not all drives will be capable of writing all formats. An internal drive fits into your computer’s body, while an external drive is a separate device that can be plugged into your computer using a USB cable. Blu-ray burners allow you to store large amounts of data on Blu-ray discs, but are typically more expensive than drives that are only capable of writing Blu-rays. If you want to write to Blu-ray discs as well as read them, you will need a drive capable of doing so. There are also combo drives, which are capable of reading Blu-ray discs but only writing to DVD and CD formats. This means that while they are capable of reading Blu-ray discs, they cannot write new ones. Most ordinary CD, DVD and Blu-ray drives are read-only. A single-layer Blu-ray disc contains space for 25 gigabytes of data, compared to 4.7 gigabytes on a single-layer DVD. Disc manufacturers can therefore write data onto the disc more densely. This is possible because while DVDs are read using a red laser, Blu-ray discs are read with a blue laser, hence the name. Unlike DVD discs, Blu-ray discs support high definition video with more pixels and more colour shades as well as up to eight channels of lossless audio. The format allows users to encode more information than the DVD format on an identically-sized disc. Blu-ray is a high-definition disc format used primarily for video. A writable Blu-ray BD-R drive allows you to both read and write Blu-ray discs.

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