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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."
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. :-(
John
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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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Wouldn't a 20% problem rate in the factory indicate a substantial error rate in the field as well?
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
... 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...
So, I remember reading somewhere that the new DVD's are really hostile to end-user rights. Bill Gates says so, 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.
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.
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?
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
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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.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
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.
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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.
----------- Theodusian -----------
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!!!
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
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.
Microsoft is using them to produce Xbox 360 games.
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.
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.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?