TDK turns its back on 'losing' slice of high definition market
Clive Akass, Personal Computer World 03 Feb 2006
TDK, one of the leading vendors of DVD discs, is not going to sell media for next-generation high definition HD-DVD drives and will concentrate instead on rival Blu-ray.
The company, a member of the Blu-ray Association, has long been a backer of the technology, but other media vendors, such as Imation, are happy to sell both Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs.
Corporate strategy director Jean-Paul Eekhout agreed that sticking to Blu-ray would limit TDK's market initially; but he believed it would win the battle with HD-DVD because it offers more capacity (25GB per disc compared with 15GB) and would, he claimed, bring burners to the market sooner.
He said Blu-ray would also get a big boost with the release of Sony's Playstation 3 games console this year.
TDK will offer both read-only and rewritable discs, known respectively as BD and BD-RE media (the RW suffix of previous disc generations has been dropped, apparently for the benefit of non-English speakers, to whom it naturally makes more sense than giving 'writable' a ghost 'w').
Blu-ray capacities and read-write speeds are expected to rise quickly after the first drives are launched. Eekhout said TDK had already produced four-layer discs capable of storing 200GB.
He demonstrated a hard coating TDK is giving its disks which protects BD data, which sits far closer to the surface than on CDs and DVDs.
He rubbed both a standard disc and coated one with wire wool, showing how one was scratched and the other was not.
Eekhout admitted that BD media manufacturer required more investment than HD-DVD discs, which supporters say can be made in DVD plants.
But he said HD-DVD would also need some investment and that the difference would not be reflected in the prices of the media.
Clive Akass, Personal Computer World 03 Feb 2006
TDK, one of the leading vendors of DVD discs, is not going to sell media for next-generation high definition HD-DVD drives and will concentrate instead on rival Blu-ray.
The company, a member of the Blu-ray Association, has long been a backer of the technology, but other media vendors, such as Imation, are happy to sell both Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs.
Corporate strategy director Jean-Paul Eekhout agreed that sticking to Blu-ray would limit TDK's market initially; but he believed it would win the battle with HD-DVD because it offers more capacity (25GB per disc compared with 15GB) and would, he claimed, bring burners to the market sooner.
He said Blu-ray would also get a big boost with the release of Sony's Playstation 3 games console this year.
TDK will offer both read-only and rewritable discs, known respectively as BD and BD-RE media (the RW suffix of previous disc generations has been dropped, apparently for the benefit of non-English speakers, to whom it naturally makes more sense than giving 'writable' a ghost 'w').
Blu-ray capacities and read-write speeds are expected to rise quickly after the first drives are launched. Eekhout said TDK had already produced four-layer discs capable of storing 200GB.
He demonstrated a hard coating TDK is giving its disks which protects BD data, which sits far closer to the surface than on CDs and DVDs.
He rubbed both a standard disc and coated one with wire wool, showing how one was scratched and the other was not.
Eekhout admitted that BD media manufacturer required more investment than HD-DVD discs, which supporters say can be made in DVD plants.
But he said HD-DVD would also need some investment and that the difference would not be reflected in the prices of the media.
