Launch and sales developments

Launch and sales developments

The first BD-ROM players were shipped in the middle of June 2006, though HD DVD players beat them in the race to the market by a few months.[18][19]

The first Blu-ray Disc titles were released on June 20, 2006. The earliest releases used MPEG-2 video compression, the same method used on DVDs. The first releases using the newer VC-1 and AVC codecs were introduced in September 2006.[20] The first movies using dual layer discs (50 GB) were introduced in October 2006.[21]

The first mass-market Blu-ray Disc rewritable drive for the PC was the BWU-100A, released by Sony on July 18, 2006. It recorded both single and dual layer BD-R as well as BD-RE discs and had a suggested retail price of US$699.