Hollywood and Blu-Ray

Seven of the eight major movie studios have announced that they will release movies in the BLU-RAY format as soon as hardware becomes available. The movies will feature high definition video and audio as well as advanced interactive features. Compared to standard definition (SD), which is the resolution used for today's TVs and DVDs, high definition (HD) offers a big improvement. A standard TV uses either NTSC which is 480i (640x480) or PAL/SECAM which is 576i (768x576). The "i" stands for interlaced, which means that only half of the lines are updated for each frame alternating between the odd and even lines. Blu-ray movies will be in 1080p (1920x1080), which is the highest of the HD resolutions. The "p" stands for progressive, which means that every line and pixel will be updated for each frame.

High-Def is (almost) finally here.