BD

1. Short for Blu-ray Disc, BD or BD-ROM, is an optical disc jointly developed by thirteen consumer electronics and PC companies such as Dell, Hitachi, Hewlett Packard, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Sony, and TDK. The Blu-ray was first announced and introduced at the 2006 CES on January 4, 2006 and is capable of storing up to 25 GB on a single-layer disc and 50 GB on a dual-layer disc, each disc being the same size as a standard CD. In the picture to the right, is an example of what the blue laser looks like in a Blu-ray disc player.

Today, Blu-ray is backed by Apple, Dell, Philips, Pioneer, Sony, Sun, TDK and other companies mentioned above and beat out HD DVD in the high-definition disc format wars on February 19, 2008 after HD DVD called it quits.

• The official Blu-ray page can be found at http://www.blu-ray.com

2. BD is also chat slang for a big deal

Also see: CD definitions, Chat slang, DVD, EVD, HD DVD, HDMI, HDTV, Java, Netflix