Blu-ray Update

[Steve Mullen]

TDK announced it's ready to ship to US retailers what it's describing as the first publicly available single-layer Blu-ray recordable discs. According to TDK, prices of blank 25 GB BD-R recordable discs will be $19.99 apiece, with blank 25 GB BD-RWs selling at $24.99.

TDK is saying its dual-layer 50 GB Blu-ray discs, to be priced at $47.99 for recordable and $59.99 for rewritable, will not be available until later this year.

Sony's first BD-R drive was announced last month, the BWU-100A, is still expected to ship this month, and will apparently support dual-layer 50 GB media the moment it's made available. This will be the ONLY way to burn BR discs until 2007.

The BWU-100A, supports recording of 25GB and 50GB BD-R (write once) or BD-RE (rewritable) discs at 2X max speed. It is capable of burning a full 25GB disc in about 30 minutes. The drive will also support recording of standard Single-layer 4.7GB DVD+R/+RW, Dual-layer 8.5GB DVD+R, DVD-RAM and CD-R/-RW media.

The new drive can be installed in a standard half-height computer bay with a parallel ATAPI (P-ATA) interface. Hopefully one can simply put this in a FireWire box -- or Sony will do so. The problem is that if it doesn't have an HDMI connection you'll need ANOTHER Player!

Interestingly, Sony's rewritable format, is referred to as BD-RE rather than BD-RW. Will it be compatible?

[Chris Hurd]

Moved from the HD100 forum to Industry News.

[Jack Zhang]

Holy smokes, that's expensive!

[Peter Jefferson]

yeah but how much are the burners...

if clients are happy to pay for a BD option, im happy to provide it, but if tthey cant give us a decent price on the burners themselves, then whats the point..

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Peter Jefferson

yeah but how much are the burners...

I think about $1,000.

[Laszlo Horvath]

Great!
But Steve, which authoring software we can use to design the DVD (Bluray)?
I use Ulead's DVD Workshop 2 now.

Laszlo

[Dan Euritt]

worthless vaporware.

i recently paid $40 for a seagate 300gb hard drive, after a couple of rebates... why would anyone want to pay over a $1000 for a storage format that's limited to 50 gigs? and the per-gig pricing of the recording medium itself is way more expensive than a hard drive!

you can't have any blu-ray clients, because the format has zero market penetration... who has players for the discs?

[Steven Davis]

I swear, this smacks of when DVD burner's first came out. I spent 1,000,000,000 dollars I say on a Sony burner, now I can get them for less than a good steak dinner!

here we go again...

[Gary Bettan]

Pioneer BDR-101A Blu-Ray burner will be shipping before NAB!
We’re hoping to get our first shipments in by the end of April! The BDR-101A will have a projected street price of $995. Here are a few Blu-Ray FAQs to wet your appetite!

·How much data can a Blu-Ray disc hold?
o 25GB on a single layer DBR or BD-RE re-writable disc

·How long will it take to write a full 25GB single layer BD-R or BD-RE disc writing at 2X?
o Approximately 45 minutes. (1X burn is about 36Mbps or 4.5MBps )

·How much High Definition video can be recorded onto a BD-R?
o It depends on the codec and bit rate used. For instance, using MPEG-4 AVC and encoding at 12Mbps, you can put more than 3 hours and 47 minutes of High Definition video along with 3 audio languages using full 1920 x 1080 resolution onto a single sided (25GB) disc.

·How many times can a BD-RE disc be rewritten/overwritten?
o More than 1,000 times!

·Which CODECs are supported by Blu-ray Disc?
o For Video: MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC, and VC-1
o For Audio: LPCM, DTS, DTS-HD, Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus

We will begin taking pre-orders for the BDR-101A sometime in early April. For more information on the BDR-101A visit our Pioneer BDR-101A page http://www.videoguys.com/pioneer.html

Gary

[Heath McKnight]

Apple talked down DVD-r prices from $20 to $10 a pop back in 2001.

Prices will bottom out shortly.

hwm

[Peter Jefferson]

Originally Posted by Laszlo Horvath

Great!
But Steve, which authoring software we can use to design the DVD (Bluray)?
I use Ulead's DVD Workshop 2 now.

Laszlo

Most likely the first authoring app will be Sonys own DVDarchitect 4, followed by the industry leaders like Maestro/Spruce etc etc

thousand bux seems alright for now, but watch the price drop dramatically when the PS3 comes out ;)

[Peter Jefferson]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

Apple talked down DVD-r prices from $20 to $10 a pop back in 2001.

Prices will bottom out shortly.

hwm

Curious.. what does apple have to do with the price of fish??
Pardon the pun, but from where i stand in the IT world on this side, apple had nothing to do wth it.. the advent of cheaper hardware and reverse engineering in the games console world in Asias piracy market opened up ANOTHER market of that being CD/DVD media in general.
Pu tit this way, if it wasnt for backup chips, teh PS2 wouldnt be as popular as it is now. Over 70% of PS2s are chipped to either play backups, or multiregioned discs.
Another thing which dictated prices was the porn industry (believe it or not) as from what ive been told from insustry insiders, is that 75% of all dvds sold are adult oriented.

I still dont se how apple can have any influence on media pricing. Considering apple is also NOW in direct competition to Sony themselves (with the NLEs and now moreso with the authoring of BD media) i dont see apple having any influence on the way sony markets or prices their wares..

I could be wrong, but that statement in itself baffles me coz i am yet to see how apple can influence media pricing.
Hell apple were a misnomer until they released the ipod... On this side of the world, apple was a "boutique-like" PC company which made specific apps for specific purposes and the Windows PC was a more generalised workhorse, hence its penetration comapred to apple.
Once the ipod came out thats when apple started to turn, penetrating a higher market share than what they had prior to the ipod.
The ipod put apple back on the map, which direction that map is going, who knows, but i can honestly say that many of the larger retail stores here in aus had no idea about macs, let alone stocking them. Now, i would say that Apple, with the marketing help of the ipod, have bought ther name back to the consumers eye, so their presence in these previously apple-less stores is now evovled into having a set range of apple products... i dont know if this is a condition of the "official retailer' status for the ipod, but it wouldnt surprise me considering apples previous shenanigans..

Either way, all we can do is wait until prices drop.. HOW they drop, who knows.. more than likely people will want to watch their pornos in HD ...

Next thing coming is smellovision..

[Peter Jefferson]

Originally Posted by Dan Euritt

worthless vaporware.

i recently paid $40 for a seagate 300gb hard drive, after a couple of rebates... why would anyone want to pay over a $1000 for a storage format that's limited to 50 gigs? and the per-gig pricing of the recording medium itself is way more expensive than a hard drive!

you can't have any blu-ray clients, because the format has zero market penetration... who has players for the discs?

I agree dude.. one thing though. is that when the PS3 comes out, all this will change.. same thing happened with DVD.. basicaly players were teh same price as a PS2, however teh PS2 also played movies.. so what do u do, u get a player only or do u get a player AND a games console??
Easy choice for mos consumers with kids..

then again the asian market bought in all these generic cheap brands and prices were forced to drop.
I agree abou the HDD storage, but put it this way, when teh PS3 comes out, there will autoamtically be an immediate merket penetration. Sipmply for being in existance... were talking at least a million units within the first year in each global sector... now THATS alot of players.... obviously those buying these units prolly wont consider the BD movie options until the movies hit the shelves...but that doesnt matter.. the fact these players are in the home is enough penetraton in itself..

Going back to HDD's it amazes me that MS didnt put a WV HD playback decoder into the 360... mind u this can prolly be upgraded later. but can someone explain to me how MS can justify a 20gb HDD @ $160???
What many people in the video industry dont realise is that gaming now plays as much,if not more of a role, in the media we work with.

[Heath McKnight]

Peter, I meant DVD-r discs. See www.writersblocklive.com for details. The creator of the site headed the Apple dept. that introduced DVD Studio Pro. He details that they were able to convince DVD-r disc manufacturers to lower the price from $15 or $20 to $10.

heath

[Peter Jefferson]

i hear ya Heath, but its a really hard thing to accept that one company "influenced" prices of DVD-r media... I just dont believe it, and from what ive seen and from what ive been exposed to within the market itself, is not purely factual.
Maybe they sent a request or made a comment about prices... ... but one company cannot influence a global media which has been dominated by windows users. Then u also have the fact that this media is manufactured by literally thousands of different prodcution companies... i really dont see how they contact each and every manufacturer asking to drop prices simply so Appla could sell more DVD authoring tools..
This is the impression im gettin from this anyway.. either way, its not important to what were discussing.. ... coz the fact remains, i realy do fail to see apple influencing anything Sony does with regard to pricing..