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

BluRay For The Win

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Low Quality

[imsabbel]

?
Whats your point?

Yield rates like that were very common in the beginning of dvd and cd production, too.

In fact i seem to remember reading about yields 50% for dual layer dvds in the beginning.

Re:Free advice from "Mr. Betamax"

[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.

Re:Free advice from "Mr. Betamax"

[Tiberius_Fel]

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.

Lifespan?

[Lord_Dweomer]

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.

Re:Lifespan?

[antifoidulus]

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 the world will beat a path to their door, money in hand. But until that point, your groussing really doesn't make a lot of sense.

Future Resistant?

[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.

Re:Low Quality

[mrtroy]

Wow, talk about low quality. 2 or every 10 they make is bad. The amount of money wasted on that is crazy and it will drive up what we have to pay for it.

Oh no! I dont want to pay any more for a product than the raw material costs for that specific product! Soon they will be wanting us to pay for research and development! For factories!! And labour!!!

Last of consumer non-recordable physical media

[bobcatdunn]

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.

Re:Free advice from "Mr. Betamax"

[timeOday]

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 me that does not bode well for reliably creating these things with sub-$100 home burners. I hope I'm wrong.