Blu-Ray Duplication - Is it worth it?
The Blu-ray technology is still so new, however some people are crazy enough to pay top dollar for it. What these people need to be aware of is that there is some buzz about the availability of blank Blu-Ray media and the potentially high costs associated with the duplication process.
Currently most Blu-ray discs can store 25 GB of data and costs about $20 per disc. Sony has recently released recordable (write-once) Blu-ray media that has a 50 GB capacity that fetches a suggested retail price of $48! Another thought provoking issue is the length of time it takes to burn 25 GB of data on a Blu-ray disc. A mere 45 minutes; that's all! The real kicker is that the current maximum burn speed is 2X.
What about duplicator towers? Of course they are out there, but once again have a hefty price tag. A tower with 10 Blu-ray burner drives will run you about $20,000. It would be silly to start investing any money on new equipment or media that is entering the market as a competitor of a fairly similar product, the HD DVD, which uses a blue laser as well. Yes the amount of data (especially high definition video) one can store on a single disc is very important, to lots of different people and businesses, but at what cost? This disc capacity issue seems to be the main differences between the two blue laser media.
One last interesting piece of information that I feel is worth sharing comes from TDK Technologies. Not only does TDK have a 100 GB prototype Blu-ray disc, and the technology to produce a 200 GB disc (which would be able to store 18 hours of high definition video), but they also have a great new scratch resistant coating called Durabis 2. Their claim with the Durabis 2 product is that the coating will help protect the disc surface from common scratches and fingerprints by a factor of 100 compared to a non-treated disc. Also the discs with the Durabis 2 coating will limit greatly the amount of dust that normally accumulates. And just for the record, we don't have any ties or get better pricing on media from TDK by mentioning any of this information.
For more information about Blu-ray technology or about Blu-ray duplication please go to a search engine or check out a few of these links: TDK Technologies, Wikipedia, or WebProNews