Blueray Disc Association Lowers BD-ROM Manufacturing Costs!!

2nd Jun 2005 01:07 #1

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http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=9979

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has announced that acceptance and adoption of the Blu-ray Disc has led to the maturation of the complete disc manufacturing process. Having multiple companies involved with each step has contributed to process improvements and cost efficiencies that bring the long-term cost of manufacturing BD-ROM discs in line with current DVD replication costs, according to the BDA.
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The most recent advances come in the area of cover-layer technology, where one of two approaches (film bonding and spin coating) can be used to apply the 0.1mm cover-layer used in Blu-ray Disc.

The spin-coating process, which uses resin to form the cover-layer, is now being piloted in Torrance, California by Panasonic, who, in cooperation with Origin Electric, has developed replication technology and equipment for the mass production of spin-coated discs.

In film bonding, the development of new extruded film technology has reduced film costs. A new film product from Teijin reduces the cost of the cover film to one-third of the cost of conventional polycarbonate materials, and Degussa, a new BDA member company, projects a single-digit Euro cents per disc cost at launch. In addition to these advances in film materials, Lintec Corporation's hard coat material and film bonding process makes the film bonding method more efficient.

With the improvements in cover-layer technology, and in preparation for mass production of BD-ROM discs, Singulus Technologies, a leading manufacturer of replication equipment, has developed replication systems that will target cycle times towards three seconds.

Sony has developed equipment to streamline the disc mastering process by reducing the eleven steps currently used in DVD mastering to five for BD-ROM. This mastering process, Phase Transition Mastering (PTM), requires as little as one-fifth of the space required for DVD mastering and the equipment can be configured to allow mastering of both BD-ROM and DVD-ROM on a single system, according to the BDA. The first two commercial machines are for Technicolor and Cinram for 2005 installation.

With these developments in the industry, replication facilities in the United States are setting up and preparing to mass-produce BD-ROM Discs. Technicolor is establishing a complete pilot BD disc manufacturing process by July 2005. Cinram already has a pilot replication line that produced demo discs for CES 2005 and is awaiting the delivery of commercial lines.

In addition to ramping up for mass production of the 50GB discs that will be available at format launch, Blu-ray has begun work to ensure that the format continues to grow as high-definition technology evolves. Blu-ray companies have successfully demonstrated 200GB discs in a laboratory environment, according to the BDA.