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

Free advice from "Mr. Betamax"

[plover]

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. :-(

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.

A day Late And A Dollar Short

[TripMaster Monkey]

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.

Re:A day Late And A Dollar Short

[Xarius]

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.

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:A day Late And A Dollar Short

[doctor_no]

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

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.

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.

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: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!!!

Price?

[mcraig]

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.

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.