What does the Blu-ray resolution mean? Is it similar to DVD? What are the differences between DVD and Blu-ray resolution? How to change Blu-ray resolution so as to watch Blu-ray movies on various media players?

Speaking Blu-ray resolution, there are so many descriptions, such as 720P Blu-ray, 1080P Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray, even 2K Blu-ray. What are these Blu-ray resolutions? Are there really so many types of Blu-ray disc resolution? How to watch a certain resolution of Blu-ray disc, such as 4K? If you want to make clear about these things, this guide would be exactly what you need. We will show you what Blu-ray resolutions are and how to change Blu-ray resolution in detail.

Part 1. What is the Blu-ray resolution?

Blu-ray is a digital optical disc data storage format which is the successor to DVD. It is capable of storing several hours of video in Full-High-Definition (1920×1080) and Ultra-High-Definition (3840×2160). Blu-ray disc type is various, so the storage power is various too. You know that the Blu-ray and DVD disc are easy to get damaged or scratched, so you'd better make backup copies of Blu-ray/DVD discs.

While the Blu-Ray can support any video format from 480i, 480p, 720i, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, the most common format of commercial movie Blu-Rays is as follows:

  1. Main (feature) Video: 1920 x 1080 progressive scan (Full HD)
  2. Additional video, bonus, deleted scenes, etc.: 480p SD or 1080p FHD.
  3. Main Audio: DTS HD Master Audio 7.1 (mostly) or sometimes Dolby TruHD 7.1 audio
  4. Supplementary audio: Dolby Digital 5.1

If you have a hardware Blu-ray disc player, you could play and watch Blu-ray discs with your TV directly with your Blu-ray disc player connected to TV. Playing Blu-ray on a computer provides another choice to enjoy Blu-ray movie, but it requires you to get professional Blu-ray disc player. You could make use of Leawo Free Blu-ray Player to play Blu-ray discs in various resolutions on your computer. It’s a region-free Blu-ray media player that could play back almost all Blu-ray discs released in the market, regardless of disc protection and region restrictions, no matter what resolutions of Blu-ray discs are in.

Part 2. DVD vs. Blu-ray vs. 4K Resolution, What's the Difference?

We know that Blu-ray is the successor to DVD, which has gained quite grate popularity in the digital entertainment market. And nowadays, besides the DVD and Blu-ray resolution, there also pops up 4K resolution. What is 4K resolution and what are the differences between DVD vs. Blu-ray vs. 4K?

DVD (abbreviation for Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc) is a digital optical disc storage format. The medium can store any kind of digital data and is widely used for software and other computer files as well as video programs watched using DVD players. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than compact discs while having the same dimensions. DVD's have an intrinsic resolution of 720×480 pixels (NTSC) and 720×540 pixels (PAL). Those pixels are either displayed in a 4:3 (standard) aspect ratio or a 16:9 (widescreen) aspect ratio. This is typically called 480p video. As you can see, 480p is a whole lot less than 1080p. There are different types of DVD discs: DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW, etc.

4K resolution refers to a horizontal display resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels. Digital television and digital cinematography commonly use several different 4K resolutions. In television and consumer media, 3840 × 2160 (4K UHD) is the dominant 4K standard, whereas the movie projection industry uses 4096 × 2160 (DCI 4K). There is now 4K/UHD Blu-Ray. It supports the following formats:

  1. Main (feature) Video: 3940 x 2160 progressive scan (Ultra HD)
  2. Additional video, bonus, deleted scenes, etc.: 480p SD or 1080p FHD.
  3. Main Audio: Dolby Atmos (mostly) or sometimes DTS:X
  4. Supplementary audio: Dolby Digital 5.1

So, what are the differences between DVD vs. Blu-ray vs. 4K? Here we have collected their compatibility, quality, resolution, storage, availability, content, and price into a comparison table to show you the differences below:

 

DVD

Blu-ray

4K

Quality

High definition

Full HD

Ultra HD

Resolution

720×480

1920x1080

4096 × 2160

Storage

4.7 GB for a single-layered, single-sided disc and 8.5 GB for a dual-layered, single-sided disc.

25GB for BD25 disc, 50GB for BD50 disc

Up to 100GB for Ultra HD Blu-ray disc(4K Blu-ray)

Availability

Most movies are now available in DVD

Compared to DVD, movies available in Blu-ray would be a little bit less

By far quite few movie resources are available in 4K

Compatibility

Best. DVD discs could be played back on DVD player, Blu-ray player

Media. You could only play back Blu-ray discs on Blu-ray players.

4K movies could be played back on various 4K TV

Price

Low

High

Higher

Part 3. How to Change Blu-ray Resolution?

We know that Blu-ray discs require Blu-ray players for playback. However, sometimes when we get Blu-ray movie discs, we may need to play these Blu-ray movie discs on our mobile devices or TV without a Blu-ray recorder drive connected. What should we do? How can we change the Blu-ray resolution?

The Blu-ray resolution changer we would like to recommend to help you change Blu-ray resolution is Leawo Blu-ray Ripper, a program that helps users rip and convert Blu-ray to all kinds of formats available on players such as VLC, windows media player, and so on. It could help you change Blu-ray resolutions without quality loss for playback on various media players, TV sets, smartphones, tablets, etc. With this program, you could easily decrypt, rip and convert Blu-ray movies to videos in various formats. It could rip and convert Blu-ray to MP4, AVI, FLV, MKV, WMV, MOV, etc. You could even convert 4K Blu-ray movies to H.265 video, 4K video output including 4K MP4 and 4K MKV, and other HD video output like HD MP4, HD AVI, MOV and many more. Leawo Blu-ray Ripper could handle Blu-ray disc, folder and ISO image files.

Step 1: Install Leawo Blu-ray Ripper

blu-ray-ripper

Leawo Blu-Ray Ripper 

☉ Decrypt and rip Blu-ray/DVD discs with disc protection and region code
☉ Convert Blu-ray/DVD to MP4, MKV, AVI, MOV, FLV, and other 180+ HD/SD formats
☉ Convert Blu-ray/DVD main movie to videos for space saving
☉ Convert 2D Blu-ray/DVD movies to 3D movies with 6 different 3D effects
☉ Fast conversion with NVIDIA CUDA, AMD APP and Intel Quick Sync acceleration technologies

Free Download Free Download

Click the button above to download and install the program on your computer. Launch the program once installation completes. It’s packed in a software suite called Prof. Media. Open the “Convert” module on Leawo Prof. Media to enter the Leawo Blu-ray Ripper interface.

Step 2: Add source Blu-ray files

Click “Add Blu-ray/DVD” button to import the source files here. You have three options, namely Add from CD-ROM, Add from folder, and Add iso file. Choose the correct one according to your needs.

Step 3: Choose loading mode

Leawo Blu-ray Ripper offers you 3 different content loading modes for loading source Blu-ray movies: Full Movie, Main Movie and Custom Mode. Check Full Movie and it’ll select all the videos. Select Main Movie to rip the main movie. Use Custom Mode to select multiple videos from the list by yourself.

Step 4: Set output format

Click on the format drop-down menu before the big green “Convert” button and click “Change” option to choose the target output format. You could choose whatever file format as output format from “Format” and “Device” groups. Leawo Blu-ray Ripper even enables you to convert Blu-ray to lossless MP4.

You are able to adjust the output video and audio parameters like video codec, audio codec, bit rate, aspect ratio, frame rate, sample rate, channel, etc. Click the “Edit” option on the drop-down panel to enter the Profile Settings panel to do this. To change Blu-ray resolution, you could do it here in the “Resolution” drop-down box.

Step 5: (optional) Edit Blu-ray before converting

Click on the editing icon to edit the video such as trim, crop, add watermark to personalize the output effect or click Edit from the format drop-down menu to adjust parameters such as video codec, resolution, sample rate etc. Note that this is optional.

Step 6: Convert Blu-ray video files

Once all settings are done, click the green button “Convert” on the toolbar and set output directory in the “Save to” box on the pop-up sidebar. After that, click the bottom “Convert” button to start converting Blu-ray movie files to video files in the format you have chosen. You could then view the entire converting process.  

You then only need to wait for the conversion to complete. Once the conversion completes, you could import the converted Blu-ray movies to any media player or device for unlimited playback.

Part 4. Conclusion

Nowadays, the DVD might still be the dominant media type in the digital movie entertainment market. But Blu-ray has shown its power and popularity to replace DVD. More and more movie fans have turned to Blu-ray for its high quality and better movie experience. And in the future, the 4K Blu-ray would be a popular way to get ultra high-resolution movie experience.