High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is the industry consortium that develops and licenses Blu-ray Disc technology and is responsible for establishing format standards and promoting business opportunities for Blu-ray Disc. The BDA is divided into three levels of membership: the Board of Directors, Contributors, and General Members. The "Blu-ray Disc founder group" was started on May 20, 2002 by nine leading electronic companies: Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG (Lucky GoldStar) Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp, and Samsung[2]. In order to enable more companies to participate, it announced in May 2004 that it would form the Blu-ray Disc Association, which was inaugurated on October 4, 2004.