Production milestone reflects the increasing popularity
of 50 Gigabyte Blu-ray Disc in the Home Entertainment market
Salzburg, Austria - October 2, 2007 - Sony DADC today announced
the production of its 10 millionth 50 Gigabyte Blu-ray Disc (BD50). Sony DADC manufactures BD50s in
three of its plants, located in Terre Haute, Indiana; Salzburg, Austria; and Shizuoka, Japan. The
ten millionth BD50 was manufactured at Sony DADC's Terre Haute facility, and was "Spider-Man™ 3"
from Columbia Pictures.
Since the launch of this High Definition format, Sony
DADC has produced more than 50 million Blu-ray Discs. In addition, these three plants have a combined Blu-ray manufacturing
capacity of 21 million discs per month.
A year and a half ago, when the dual-layer 50 Gigabyte
Blu-ray Disc was introduced it caused a stir amongst the content creation industry. The
exceptionally high storage capacity enables movie studios to present their titles in the very best
High Definition visual and audio quality. Furthermore, these huge capacity discs provide
opportunities to load added value content, such as bonus material, interviews with the actors and
production team, plus rich BD-Java-based interactivity designed to provide a complete entertainment
experience.
"Sony DADC offers similar turnaround times for the current BD release
volumes as for DVD" explains Dietmar Fischerlehner, Director Engineering at Sony DADC. "At our
sites, BD25 production yield already lays above 85%, BD50's production yield is currently exceeding
the 75% mark. This means that for the upcoming peak season 2007 BD yield rates are already drawing
near DVD's yield figures", Fischerlehner continues.
To promote market development of Blu-ray Disc manufacturing, Sony
DADC has worked with leading system integrators of disc replication equipment such as Singulus and
Oerlikon in the areas of dual layer Blu-ray production technologies. As a result, both
Singulus and Oerlikon have recently announced the shipping of their first BD50 production liners to
their customers within the next few weeks.
About Sony DADC Europe
Sony DADC is a leading disc and digital solution
provider for the entertainment, education and information industries, offering world-class optical
media replication services, digital and physical supply chain solutions and software services. Sony
DADC Europe is part of the world's largest optical media production network, which consists of 14
manufacturing facilities including sites in UK, United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, India,
Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and China.
PR Contact:
Christina Schobesberger
Tel: 0043 6246 880 281
Email:christina.schobesberger@sonydadc.com
