Blu-whales: The Staggering Bulk of Blu-ray

Blu-ray discs are big. If you want to know just how big, ask HD-DVD. In 2008, Blu-ray sank HD-DVD for good and claimed its place as the next-generation video medium of choice– a victory due at least in part to Blu-ray's superior storage capacity. If you are in the market for Blu-ray burning software, you might be asking yourself: How big is Blu-ray really? Data is an abstract notion that can be difficult to quantify. But at TopTenREVIEWS We Do the Research So You Don’t Have To.™

For the sake of comparison, let's assume that one byte of data is equivalent to an ounce in the physical world. That would put a single megabyte at roughly 65,000 pounds. That's a pretty big number, but when you consider that the largest living, breathing creatures can weigh up to 218,000 pounds, it starts to feel like pocket change. By this method of reckoning, a 1.47MB floppy disk could fit about six full-grown African elephants. But we've come a long way since the floppy disk of yesteryear, so how many elephants can we fit on the discs of today? Hold your breath, because we are about to plunge into the realm of the absurd.

With the invention of the compact disc, we jumped from 1-2 megabytes of external storage up to 700, the biggest leap in consumer data storage to date. It would take quite a few elephants to fill up that kind of space. In fact, you could pack is as many as 194 blue whales and one six-month-old calf, and they are the largest organisms we know of. (That's 3,492 elephants, if you were curious.)

Fast forward to the next big leap in data storage: DVD. With the five-fold increase in storage space that came with the DVD, it became possible to use optical discs to store digital videos. How many whales can you stuff inside a 4.7GB disc? If you don't leave any wiggle-room, about 1,051. Thinking along these lines, it seems impossible that we could ever want or need more space. It did not take long, however, until the proliferation of larger televisions left DVDs in the dust, incapable of providing the necessary level of detail to fill the screen.

Then along came Blu-ray, pushing optical disc capacity from 4.7GB clear up to 25GB, with high-precision violet lasers. With all that extra room, enormous high-definition videos became available to consumers for the first time. And how many blue whales fit inside 25GB? By our calculations, the answer is 5,592. To properly appreciate the scope of the number, we did a little bit of research and found it to be about 500 more than the most generous estimate of blue whale population in the entire world.

So what can we do with that kind of bulk? High-definition movies aren't for everybody, but Blu-ray is not just for movies. If you have a Blu-ray burner and Blu-ray burning software, it is 25GB of free space to fill with anything you can imagine. Maybe it's five year's worth of family photos. Maybe it's the best rock-and-roll from the last three generations. Maybe it is 5,592 blue whales. Whatever you decide, enjoy the freedom.