Panasonic Begins Blu-Ray Production

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."

Comments

Re:This does not bode well

[madman101]

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.

Re:A day Late And A Dollar Short

[Jeff DeMaagd]

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.

Re:This does bode well

[Phat_Tony]

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.