Blu-ray’s extra storage capacity allows the technology to store much more information and so offer significant advantages in picture and sound quality over DVD.

Possibly because of my background in audio, it’s the sound quality of Blu-ray that really excites me.

To save space, the audio track on DVDs is compressed. Signals deemed by the compression software to be less significant are simply left out. The subtle signals that should be able to be reproduced on a quality system are simply not there. For example a jazz drummer may be using brushes on his drums or symbols, but if the compression software deems this is not significant enough you simply won’t hear it.

A Blu-ray disk that has either lossless compression (Dolby True HD or DTS HD Master Audio) or no compression (PCM) will reproduce everything that was recorded. While on a good system a Blu-ray disk will sound more dynamic than a DVD, the most noticeable difference will be the subtle details that can be recorded on the Blu-ray but not on the DVD. Unfortunately not all Blu-ray discs have Dolby True HD, DTS HD Master Audio or PCM; some only have Dolby Digital or DTS which means you would only be getting normal DVD sound quality.

Although Blu-ray is a discreet 7.1 format, very few 7.1 discs have been released to date. Perhaps more and more 7.1 discs will be released in the future.

While the evolutionary step from DVD to Blu-ray is not as significant as the step from VHS tape to DVD, it still represents a huge improvement. I believe Blu-ray is definitely here for the long term.