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Panasonic Begins Blu-Ray Production

Posted by Zonk on 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."

9 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. A day Late And A Dollar Short by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 3, Interesting


    So....finally in production...it's too bad HVDs 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.

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    1. Re:A day Late And A Dollar Short by Xarius · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

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    2. Re:A day Late And A Dollar Short by headkase · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

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    3. Re:A day Late And A Dollar Short by lowrydr310 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      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 used, they do a really good job of protecting the disc from scratches. I'm assuming HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs are the same 12cm as DVDs and CDs. Is there a reason they're sticking to that size? I would like to see them agree on one standard that uses a smaller disc that is enclosed inside a protective casing.

      I'm installing a DVD burner this weekend and I've never worked with them before. I'm very wary of backing up everything on my computer on DVD - if it gets scratched and stops working, that's a lot of data lost. I'm thinking I may burn 2 copies of everything just to be safe (I have about 5GB of pictures that I've taken over the years and I don't want to lose them).

    4. Re:A day Late And A Dollar Short by doctor_no · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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

      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

      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

  2. This does not bode well by voice_of_all_reason · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wouldn't a 20% problem rate in the factory indicate a substantial error rate in the field as well?

  3. Failure rate by squoozer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

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    1. Re:Failure rate by Zathrus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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 hardly format killing. And yields will improve as they get the process down, much as they did for CDs and DVDs.

      If next gen disks are much worse than DVD's they won't be worth using.

      BD-ROM and HD-DVD are actually supposed to be less susceptible to damage than either CD or DVD -- they have tougher polycarbonate coverings and a slightly different overall design (BD more so than HD-DVD). That's the theory at least. Whether or not it holds up to be true in the real world is yet to be determined.

  4. Price? by mcraig · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.