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Panasonic Begins Blu-Ray Production 170

Posted by Zonk from the world-of-tomorrow-yeah-yeah dept.
magicchex writes "Panasonic has announced that they have begun pilot Blu-Ray production of dual-layer 50GB discs in their Torrance, California factory. They claim to already have an 80% success rate in production. Engadget and The Register, among other, have also reported on this." From the Register: "Matsushita's Panasonic subsidiary has retooled its US Blu-ray Disc (BD) production line to offer not only 25GB single-layer discs but also 50GB dual-layer media ... Panasonic's plant, located in Torrance, California, is still in the pilot stage, but the company claimed it is already punching out BDs with a yield of over 80 per cent - so it has to bin fewer than 20 per cent of the discs it produces, which seems rather a lot in the context of a low-cost, mass-market medium."
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Panasonic Begins Blu-Ray Production More

Panasonic Begins Blu-Ray Production

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  • Free advice from "Mr. Betamax" (Score:5, Funny)

    by plover ( 150551 ) * on Friday December 09, 2005 @11:24AM (#14219650) Homepage Journal
    Figures.

    Long ago I decided I was going to go with HD DVD when it came out, mostly because Sony was backing Blu-ray. I'm kind of worried that Microsoft is backing it, because they're slightly more likely than Sony to get the DRM right. Regardless, I know that I am "Mr. Betamax" when it comes to predicting future technologies. I have about a 100% track record when it comes to making early adopter choices, which means I've had to re-buy 100% of my stuff.

    So, here's some free advice to everyone: when I buy my first HD DVD player, the rest of you should breathe a collective sigh of relief and buy the Blu-ray gear, because it'll be guaranteed that I chose incorrectly. :-(

    • Sony was backing Blu-ray.

      So does that mean every blank blu-ray disc comes with its own rootkit?
      • That's just the tip of the iceberg...

        They're also including a new technology that wipes all memory of ever having watched the Blu-Ray disc. (Indeed, it will also wipe all memory of the disc's existence; prompting a consumer to purchase multiple versions of the same disc)
      • Either format is going to some sort of DRM. But at this point, I'm thinking Sony will be the lesser of two evils. Because as we've seen, they are pretty incompetent when it comes to these sorts of things. I expect BlueRay video encryption to be hacked within a day and a half.
      • So does that mean every blank blu-ray disc comes with its own rootkit?

        Blu-Ray doesn't require it for DRM like CompactDisc does, so no, it doesn't mean anything of the sort. In fact, the "core" DRM is exactly the same in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, although Blu-Ray has a few extra technologies added on beyond that and, as far as I'm aware, doesn't require (only offers as an option in the standard) content providers to allow copying onto a computer. (Thus, IMHO, you're more likely to see a Sony rootkit if HD-DVD wi
    • Figures.

      Long ago I decided I was going to go with HD DVD.... guaranteed that I chose incorrectly. :-(

      I guess you're kinda Blu today then, uh?

    • Re:Free advice from "Mr. Betamax" (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Long ago I decided I was going to go with HD DVD when it came out, mostly because Sony was backing Blu-ray.

      I think the fact that Sony is backing it, given their history with media formats, is damning for blu-ray. Sony is the real "Mr. Betamax". They invented the dead format, along with mini-disc and memory sticks and all their other worthless media formats.

      • Don't forget about the CD... oh wait, that one worked out pretty good.
      • That's a part of why I was hoping HD DVD would be the big player.

        What bothers me is that the industry never announces WHY Sony is so consistently rejected by the marketplace. It's pretty obvious (to me anyway) that DRM has been damning them all along. Minidiscs sounded really cool, but the ATRAC encoding made them worthless. DAT tapes? They were never adopted anywhere outside of the audiophile community, but when Aiwa (Marantz?) refused to honor the "copy bit" they at least picked up a few supporters.

    • Re:Free advice from "Mr. Betamax" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tiberius_Fel ( 770739 ) <fel AT empirereborn DOT net> on Friday December 09, 2005 @11:45AM (#14219904)
      You can do what I do. Wait for a de facto standard or wait until somebody makes a player that can handle both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. It's what I did with the whole DVD+/- mess.
      • Wait for a de facto standard or wait until somebody makes a player that can handle both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. It's what I did with the whole DVD+/- mess.

        That's what I did with DVD writers too, but it might get more complicated [engadget.com] with this generation. You'd pretty much need two read/write mechanisms in a drive. Pioneer once made a player that could read DVD and LaserDisc so it's certainly possible.

        For backups I'll use Blu-Ray because it can hold more. HD-DVD seems better suited to being handled by the kids bu

        • You'd pretty much need two read/write mechanisms in a drive. Pioneer once made a player that could read DVD and LaserDisc so it's certainly possible.

          I've heard that some early DVD-ROM drives also used multiple head mechanisms.

          However, I don't think multiple mechanisms is actually a requirement for a DVD/LD player. Certainly the unit I took apart only had one mechanism and would play CD and LD. Meanwhile, we know that you can read CD and DVD with one mechanism - how many drives have you seen lately

          • Granted the above is kind of an unsupported jump in reasoning but given that you can read CD and LD with the same frequency laser I think it's pretty reasonable.

            You're right - that makes sense. Perhaps I was thinking of the units that had an extra head for the flipside of the laserdisc (and a memory buffer to spool it out while the disc changed direction). I could never afford one of those, but ohhh, that would have been swell. The WAF was always low on LD because of the flips, especially on CAV discs.

      • Wait for a de facto standard or wait until somebody makes a player that can handle both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. It's what I did with the whole DVD+/- mess.

        Me too. But you know what? It still hasn't worked out. I consider the DVD virtually a failure so far as a writable medium goes. The letters "DVD" on a device do NOT ensure compatibility. You burn a DVD, you never know whether it will work in another machine. It's a nightmare, like floppy disks.

        With the success rate of mass-produced DVDs only 80%, to

        • Do you burn DVDs at a rate close to or higher than the maximum printed on the media? Do you use media from the cheapest half of the market?

          Plextor media works 100%, the other stuff is great for creating stuff that you will then read back on the drive that wrote it. Or on a drive that you know reads the media from your writer.

    • when I buy my first HD DVD player, the rest of you should breathe a collective sigh of relief and buy the Blu-ray gear, because it'll be guaranteed that I chose incorrectly.

      Waitasec...What if you're one of those HD-DVD sellers trying to use reverse psychology on us geeks, the people whose opinion is usually solicited for these purchases? I call shenanigans!

      Now where's that tinfoil hat...

    • Heh.

      Now, while I do feel your pain, there is a simple solution to this - wait and see which one is victorious before buying either one. DVDs are going to be good enough for me for some time.
      • Agreed. I watched the entire LotR extended edition on a 110" projected screen, using my PC as an upconverting DVD player. My only issues were with my projector needing cleaning and alignment, the picture itself was great. I tried a couple of sample clips from Microsoft's WMV HD stuff, and perhaps it looked a bit sharper, but not much.
    • Hey wait a second. I am Mr. Betamax :-P

      Being serious I personally plan to wait until these discs and HDDVD have been out for a while before I will consider purchasing one. There is currently too much back and forth between these two formats right now and I prefer to wait. I did the same thing with DVD's, I waited until the format wars had been settled (settled being relative) and there were dual format burners. However if my understanding is corrrect dual format burners for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are a n

    • Blu-ray and HD-DVD will be DOA if holographic discs work, and are affordable.

  • A day Late And A Dollar Short (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Friday December 09, 2005 @11:28AM (#14219699)

    So....finally in production...it's too bad HVDs [slashdot.org] are in the process of eating their lunch. Perhaps next time Sony/Phillips and Toshiba will see the benefit in cooperating to get a product out to the consumer quickly enough to avoid having a superior technology render their product irrelevant.

    • Re:A day Late And A Dollar Short (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Xarius ( 691264 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @11:40AM (#14219844) Homepage
      Just like the superior Beta Max rendered the VHS irrelevant... oh wait, bad example. Try how the superior Minidisk rendered the CD irrelevant... oh, that's another one.

      Prevalence and superiority are not intrinsically linked you know. The first widespread large-storage High Def thingy will be Blu-Ray because it's in the PS3.

      The same happened with DVD, doesn't matter which is better, the one that invades the homes first and fastest will be the new standard for some time.
      • Just like the superior Beta Max rendered the VHS irrelevant

        How can Betamax be superior when it cannot hold a full-length movie?

      • Try how the superior Minidisk rendered the CD irrelevant... oh, that's another one.

        What ever happened to those things anyway? I had one a long time ago before MP3 players were common, and my biggest complaint was its 1x recording capability. I hear Sony was able to speed it up a bit with later versions, but I never actually used it. As far as I know, there was never an option to use minidiscs for data.

        I really liked the hard plastic case of a MiniDisc. Just like the CD caddys that early CD-ROM drives u

        • Is there a reason they're sticking to that size?

          I don't know, but I could think of several possible reasons:

          • Having the same size should make it possible to produce drives which read both BD and CD/DVD
          • Having the same size might allow to re-use some of the machines handling them in the factory (e.g. the machines which put them in their cases)
          • If they had only half the diameter, there would fit only 1/4 of the data on them, and 12.5 GB surely isn't enough of a difference to win against 8.5 GB Dual Layer DV
        • What ever happened to those things anyway?

          They introduced Hi-MD, which is 1GB storage MD, the players can now do MP3 and download songs onto the MD. They were very popular in Japan, however, I think the new breed of high capacity MP3 players are starting to take over.
          There are some great deals out there for MD players as their popularity is declining.

      • Re:A day Late And A Dollar Short (Score:4, Informative)

        by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:07PM (#14220089) Homepage Journal
        Just like the superior Beta Max rendered the VHS irrelevant...

        Betamax wasn't necessarily superior at the time it was competing, even if it was, the TVs and media recording equipment at the time weren't necessarily good enough to show the difference. Also there was the issue of too-short tapes (all movies were two tapes) and higher cost of the deck.

        Try how the superior Minidisk rendered the CD irrelevant...

        MiniDisk is not superior to CD. It was simply more portable, though the cartridge did protect the discs very well.

        The same happened with DVD, doesn't matter which is better, the one that invades the homes first and fastest will be the new standard for some time.

        There really wasn't a competing "DVD" format unless VCD was considered competition, which was the case only in certain areas where VCDs took hold. There were competing proposals, but thankfully, at the time, everyone cooperated, except for the HP/Sony DVD+R debacle.
        • Well, minidisc is superior to CD in every way except for audio quality... As for DVD+R[W] at least the resulting discs [tend to] work fine in legacy players, as long as you don't use any of the more esoteric features of DVD+R... which no one does.
      • Somebody already pointed out why BetaMax was inferior to VHS where it mattered, but I've never even heard the assertion that the Minidisc was superior to the CD. The Minidisc has something like one-fourth the bitrate of an audio CD.
      • "The first widespread large-storage High Def thingy will be Blu-Ray because it's in the PS3."
        You can't compare the situation for DVD in 2000 to the situation for BluRay in 2006. DVD was becoming the standard without the PS2, and implying that the PS2 helped establish DVD and not vice versa is a very foolish way of looking at things.
      • Try how the superior Minidisk rendered the CD irrelevant... oh, that's another one.


        The Minidisc was never about replacing the CD, it was about replacing the cassette tape for uses like car/portable audio.
    • Remember when CDs were just huge relative to the hard drive you had at the time? HVD's sound like they could help you recapture a bit of that magic... ;)
      What consumer media needs that much space right now? Massive compilations? Every Linux distro on one disc as ISOs? But that's the wrong question, having that much storage would enable the next level of expectations. Season one of Trek on one disc, now that would be nice.
      • What consumer media needs that much space right now?

        They will soon need it: 50 GB for the data, 250 GB for the DRM.

      • What consumer media needs that much space right now?... Season one of Trek on one disc, now that would be nice.

        Bingo! Consumers would go for that. But I don't think the content producers will be among the first to go for it, or maybe never. They want to control the format for themselves, and they're slow adopters.

        1 TB may sound like a lot, but you'll see... it will end up with only 750GB formatted capacity, and won't be available for a couple years yet, and won't be affordable for a few more years a

    • Re:A day Late And A Dollar Short (Score:5, Interesting)

      by doctor_no ( 214917 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:08PM (#14220098)
      Actually, Holographics Media is likely the generaton after Blu-ray/HD-DVD. The HVD alliance does not even have plans to release HVD-Roms until around 2009. It's also very unlikely they can release the players and the media at an affordable cost within this generation.

      http://www.hvd-alliance.org/abouthvd/technology.ht ml [hvd-alliance.org]

      You might also note that companies that are inveting in holographic media are the same as the ones investing in Blu-ray/HD-DVD, including Sony, Toshiba and Matsushita.

      http://www.manifest-tech.com/media_dvd/dvd_holo.ht m [manifest-tech.com]

      Quote from Optoware president (HVD Alliance):

      "Sony and some major Japanese electronics companies are studying holographic storage to replace HD-DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. Sony wants to develop next-next generation storage technologies and we can say that our collinear solution is getting very popular," Kageyama said.

      http://www.pcworldmalta.com/news/2004/Aug/271.htm [pcworldmalta.com]

  • Wouldn't a 20% problem rate in the factory indicate a substantial error rate in the field as well?
    • I would think so. That is 1 out of every 5 which is seems expensive to me. If we could get 5% or 1% then I would get more of a warm and fuzzy. but 20% is pritty high. Of course I don't what the failure rates are for normal DVDs, CD's and HD DVD are. So I guess it could be good if that is the normal rate of failure. Explaining why they are so darn expensive.

    • Re:This does not bode well (Score:5, Informative)

      by madman101 ( 571954 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @11:34AM (#14219778)
      Not at all. Semiconductor yields are frequently lower than 80%, but chips that survive the burn in period are very reliable. Granted, this is a mechanical device and it's a little different, but an 80% yield for a pilot project of any type is excellent.

      • "They claim to already have an 80% success rate in production"

        Judging of the article's language use, 80% seems to be quite good. Anyway, they're apparently still developing.

      • yield of over 80 per cent - so it has to bin fewer than 20 per cent of the discs it produces

        Thank God that they calculated those numbers for us. I would hate to think what kind of errors would be produced if we had to do that math in our heads!

      • 80% yield and lower is only acceptable for expensive high margin semiconductors. Mass produced low cost semiconductor components need yields in the high 90's to be successful. This is more comparable to the costs involved with mass produced pressed discs.
      • Actually Panasonic's plant produces the media, not the drives.

      • Re:This does bode well (Score:5, Informative)

        by Phat_Tony ( 661117 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @02:18PM (#14221411)
        I had a close friend who worked at a CD and DVD manufacturer for years (Metatec). I took the plant tour with him twice. When they set up a new line, yields were often as low as 10%. Then they examine, tweak, and repeat for months and months, gradually increasing the yield. At the time of my second tour, they had just set up their first DVD manufacturing line, and it's yield was still under 10%. Of course they can't sell them profitably at that rate, but it was just a phase they had to go through while they got the line up to speed. I don't remember exactly what yield percentage they said they needed for profitability, but I think it was around 75%. (for DVD's, at that time. For CD's, it was much higher, because the yield needed for profitability depended on the competition's yield, which affected industry prices.) I think they said they expected it might take up to 6 months to achieve profitability on the line from the time it spit off its first disk.

        This early in the game, I get the impression that 80% yield is pretty good. Maybe the setup, testing, and refinement procedures have improved dramatically since the early 90's, and they expect higher yields faster. But I doubt they're unhappy with that yield that early. If, for example, they expect the long run marginal production cost on one of these disks to be $0.10, then the 80% yield would only take that up to $0.125 each, which is a pretty small detail on disks that will probably sell for $8-$20 as finished products with content. Over millions of disks, those cents add up, so I'm sure they'd like to get six sigma reliability on the things, but I don't think 80% yield is a deal killer.

        The CD lines at Metatec, which had been running for years, got yields in the 98-99% range. I suspect they'll hit that eventually.

        • ... still under 10%. Of course they can't sell them profitably at that rate ...

          Oh? Why not? The cost of producing a pentium chip, (exlcuding R&D writeoff and Yield factorization) is very similar to producing any other chip at the most about $10. But they sell for up to $1000. The ones that sell for $1000 are the ones that come from the 10% yield line, at $10 per chip (bad or good) produced, and a 10% yield, you still get to write off about $900 on R&D for that chip.....
          • Oh? Why not?

            Comparing Pentiums and CD manufacturing are, I think, comparing apples and oranges. Intel both owns the manufacturing plant and sells the chip.

            Most - if not all - large record companies contract out the production of CDs. The income of a CD manufacturing company is based on the price agreed in their contract with the record company, not by the pricetag on the CD when the record company sells it to Amazon. And a CD manufacturing company probably can't raise their price much to cover the added exp
            • For CDs there is a load of competition to make the CDs at $0.10 a piece. As you note, if you pay $20 in the shop, most of it is for the content. Someone selling content can probably charge $40 for 50Gb worth of higher-res content instead of the older $20. If the production costs for that 50Gb DVD is $1.00 higher (a tenfold increase) then that will still be a good deal.
  • Anyone who knows about this stuff, is 20% lost CDs much at this stage of development? How were the other companies at this point?

  • 20% Failure (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @11:35AM (#14219785)
    How do you determine a failed disc? Record on it, read it back, see that there are errors, and bin it? Oops, the disc was good, but we can't use it now.
  • so it has to bin fewer than 20 per cent of the discs it produces

    It's easier to throw the disks out now rather than much later after they've been taking up shelf space for a year.

  • ... the company claimed it is already punching out BDs with a yield...

    "BDs" is interesting: it suggests some sort of priority over CDs. I can see the next generations as being called ADs, but that's when the competition will come up with BCs...

  • DRM? (Score:2, Informative)

    by redmoss ( 108579 )
    So, I remember reading somewhere that the new DVD's are really hostile to end-user rights. Bill Gates says so [betanews.com], so it must be true :)

    Personally, I think whatever DRM is included by the megacorps will just get broken anyway, so I don't see the point. Remember region encoding in DVD's? It's trivial to circumvent.

    • Re:DRM? (Score:1, Troll)

      by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
      What's the point?

      It's how you convince retarded media execs to buy into the technology. They're so far removed from reality that they think they're better off with some invasive non-functional DRM protecting their interests.

      I suggest anyone who questions this to take a few trips around the country [and/or overseas]. See the retarded jackasses talking loudly [and mindlessly] on their cell phones in the terminal? Those are "suits".

      They're useless people. Their job is to make a lot of noise, smoke and mirr
    • I don't think its so easy to circumvent the real use for DRM -control. Let's face it, DRM isn't about preventing piracy. You know it, I know it, and the MPAA and RIAA know it. Piracy is just the ruse they can sell to the public, lawmakers, etc. Do you think they could have gotten the DMCA passed if they stated they needed it, not to prevent piracy, but so they could control what users were allowed to do with the media after they purchased it?

      DVDs are the perfect example of this. I've now run into 2 DVDs tha

  • BluRay For The Win (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09, 2005 @11:39AM (#14219824)
    With the PS3 launch coming in March - only three to four months away and disc production underway, we can finally put to rest all of the tiresome BluRay vs the dead HD-DVD talk and move on to something else to argue about.

    Sony is going to sell somewhere in the 120-150 million PS3s over the next four to five years. Along with all of the early BluRay adopters snatching up players to use with their increasingly cheap 1080p displays. The era of real HD is just about to hit.

    Cool.

    • While Blu-Ray is clearly superior for data storage, the unwillingness of Sony to support Mandatory Managed Copy is very disturbing. Basically, without making Managed Copy mandatory, movie studios can decide whether or not you can exercise your fair use rights.

      You know what the answer to that will be.
    • PS3 is reported to only come out in the Spring time in JAPAN. Based on the launch delay of the PS2 between Japan and the US, the estimate for when the US gets the PS3 is Nov 2006.

  • Failure rate (Score:3, Interesting)

    by squoozer ( 730327 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @11:43AM (#14219877)

    I assume that they will be able to get that failure rate down to a couple of percent or lower (I hope) but with failure rates so low on CD's and DVD's will this make next gen DVD to expensive for most things for years to come? More worrying though is what will the life expectance be of these disks. CD's are pretty tough, DVD's are fairly tough but moderatly suseptable to damage. If next gen disks are much worse than DVD's they won't be worth using. If failure rates are around 15% does this mean that a good portion of disks are close to failing as soon as they come off the production line?

    • The ones that fail seem simply par for the course when producing things like this, there is always an expected and acceptable amount of rejects in any mass volume production environment.

      This failure rate does not indicate, in any way, the life expectancy of the ones that pass and are shipped out for consumption though.
      • I don't know if the 20% rate is good or bad, but it does raise the quality question in my mind. If many of the bits can barely be read reliably, does that mean a scratch that normally wouldn't be a problem will cause a read error? IMO that does go towards the question of life expectancy -even to the point of how well they'll handle the warping, etc. that happens over time.

        The other question is what constitutes a passing grade vs. a failure? Are we talking about a quality level where 100% of players can play

    • Re:Failure rate (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Zathrus ( 232140 )
      will this make next gen DVD to expensive for most things for years to come

      If they just started a new process and the first few batches are at 80% yield that's actually pretty damn good. It wasn't long ago (as in, a month or so) that dual-layer BD-ROMs were still in the lab, so this is a very new process.

      That said, let's say it costs $1/disk/batch. If you have to throw away 20% of that batch how much do you have to sell each remaining disk for to break even? $1.25. It's an appreciable difference, sure, but h
    • It all depends on their sampling procedures.

      "80% success rate" may mean that they have to discard 20% of their batches. For instance, if they sample 100 of a batch of 10,000 and 5 of them are bad, maybe they throw out that batch.

      On the other hand, maybe they are finding that 2 in 10 are bad.

      Even so, I think the failure rate is for initial quality. Longevity is a separate issue, having to do more with the durability of the media, not so much how well it's made. They're also struggling with hard coats for t
    • That is not a failure rate if they can reliably identify and recycle the bad disks. Then it simply becomes a part of the manufacturing process being used. It is frequently cheaper to use simpler methodologies with lower yields and feed the bad items back to the grinder than to strive for a perfect yield. When yield is not measured at the door, process costs can be unnecessarily driven out of control by causing a focus on perfection at the wrong point.
  • > has to bin fewer than 20 per cent of the discs it produces

    Cool! Can I have those discarded discs to use as holiday decorations?!?!
  • The rejected ones could still be used as scarecrow in my back yard.

    Failed CDR and AOL CD are already good scarecrow. Birds don't like them.

    Sure, I don't like the junk DRM that is coming with blue ray DVD as well. Perhaps the remaning sucessfully built 80% could be used as future customers scarecrow. Nothing here to buy, Everything on that Blue Ray DVD belong to us. Go away communist opensource, GNU, EFF customer bastard ! ;)

  • Lifespan? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @11:51AM (#14219957) Homepage
    Does anybody know the predicted lifespan of BluRay discs? I know CDs and DVDs lives are measured in years.

    As we continue the trend of storing larger and larger amounts of data on media such as this, it really makes me wonder when companies will focus on longevity of their product rather than storage capacity.

    • I wouldn't trust the manufacturer's claims about lifespan anyway. Ive have plenty of discs rated at shelf lives of 10+ years degrade in under 4 years.
      • I can't get burned CDs to last very long at all. I store them all in a safe, dry place: on the dash of my car...burned side up. What am I doing wrong?

    • Re:Lifespan? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by antifoidulus ( 807088 )
      When the free market demands it? Seriously, people who are serious about their data use more redundant, longer lasting(and by extension usually more expensive) media. But that doesn't match everyone's needs. Some people just need (relatively)short lived but dense storage. So should companies stop producing cds/dvds or make them more expensive so they last longer just to appease the former crowd?
      If someone(you can feel free to do it of course!)came up with a cheap, dense, long lasting media format then

  • Future Resistant? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just 50GB?,
    At the moment I'm quite content with the storage the average dual layer DVD holds, and the quality of the picture and sound for that matter. I believe the current capacity for DVD is sufficient for all but HDTV recording in the immediate future. 50GB dual layer media really isn't a large enough jump to secure this new technology for any length of time.
  • it is already punching out BDs with a yield of over 80 per cent - so it has to bin fewer than 20 per cent of the discs it produces
    Whoa whoa whoa - they didn't say they threw any away, they just said that their yield is 80 percent. They're outsourcing their QA.... to US.
  • Sony, Panasonic et al are going to lose big on this one. It's not about picture quality-- it's about access to content and convenience. Downloadable music is killing CD sales even though MP3s, etc. are below the quality of even a CD, and much below SACDs. Whoever convinces the movie/tv industry to go the downloadable route and make available a 1080p video file will make all of these new discs pointless. My bet is on Apple.
    • I don't care about the discs used for movies so much as I do for BACKUPS. I need a cheap, large disk format to do backups of my hard drives at home and something cheap at work. My boss still makes me use a 5 year old tape drive and won't buy me more disks. If i had something cheap that help 50 gb, I could backup the whole server. Its a raid 1 array with 2 60gb disks :(
  • Blu-ray is more interesting, cause it is a high density storage format. (More so than hd-dvd which is a continuance of dvd technology), making it possible to put 50GiB's on the one BD. 4 layers will give 100 GiB. Making a backup of a system requires that much storage and even more. Triple layer hd-dvd gives 45 GiB's.

    everybody is talking high def video, but really who needs that. look at the poularity of lossy compression formats. is it necessary they put more "extra" stuff on the dvd's that nobody watches a

  • Price? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mcraig ( 757818 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:39PM (#14220433)
    Anyone any ideas how much these discs are going to cost? A large part of who wins is decided by the hit the consumer takes in his pocket. I think DVD-RAM almost died out due to the high cost of discs early on though now they've dropped in price the extra features over DVD-RW seem to be helping it to make a comeback.

  • Just a note on the 80% success (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:40PM (#14220439) Journal
    From TFAS:

    They claim to already have an 80% success rate in production.

    And TFA:

    Single-layer BD-ROM discs are currently being produced on the pilot line with more than 80% yield rates.

    So keep in mind that figure wasn't about the 50 GB discs talked about in the article, and what's news here.
  • I think I know what I will buy myself this year.

    It will be a combo VHS/DVD/DivX player.

  • Can they guarantee at least a 50 year lifespan (I have "old skool" pictures older than that) for my photos and videos? I really don't see the point of transferring family pictures and video to yet another format that will likely be useless in 20 years. Oh, wait, I forgot: who cares about priceless images, it's all about the upgrading so we can keep the economy going.
  • Why not China? I'm really interested to know. Maybe this is why it's a pilot project.
  • I've been a bit worried following the whole Blu-Ray thing because of the various DRM issues that have been raised many times (net connection, phone home, and err, let's just say Sony's reputation from the whole root kit thing).

    But now I've got another problem - that Matsushita/Panasonic are involved.

    Here's why:
    I have the misfortune of a MATSHITA UJ-811 DVD drive in my notebook. After moving continents with a bunch of DVDs. I ran into a region code problem.After googling around a lot, I found that:

    "MMC stand
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Didn't anybody notice that they are producing ROM, i.e. factory mastered disks?

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