TDK has announced that in the process of restructuring their media business, they've decided to stop manufacturing their own recordable CD's and DVD's.
TDK Corporation (NYSE:TDK - News) announced today that the board of directors decided at the board meeting held on March 8, 2006, to further accelerate the restructuring of recording media business, to withdraw from the manufacturing of recordable CD&DVD products in TDK group. Consequently, TDK decided to shut down the production facilities at its European subsidiary, TDK Recording Media Europe in Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The shut down is planned to take place at the end of May 2006. This decision completes TDK's withdrawal from the manufacturing of recordable CD & DVD products, coupled with the reorganization of plants in Chikumagawa area (Nagano, Japan) implemented at the end of last year.

TDK Corporation and its group companies (hereinafter called "TDK") have been fundamentally restructuring the recording media business during this fiscal year. While reviewing the progress of the restructuring and future strategies of the recording media business, TDK has looked for ways to re-strengthen the manufacturing of recordable CD&DVD foundations from various perspectives. However, a sharp drop in market prices of recordable CD&DVDs as well as the increased cost of natural resources has led the recording media business in TDK to serious problems. After studies of measure for re-strengthening manufacturing, the decision of withdrawal from the manufacturing of recordable CD & DVDs that TDK management has made should lead to an improvement and reform of recording media business to change fundamentally the business model.
Keep in mind that TDK plans to contine to sell CD and DVD media. Instead of manufacturing their own, they'll buy it from a third party. If you'd like to read more, TDK's entire press release can be found here. Add a comment
Sony Europe has announced that they will start shipping their Blu-ray Disc media this month. Surprisingly enough, their single-layer BD-RE media is expected to be available by mid-March.

Sony Europe's Recording Media & Energy (RME) division today announced that its first Blu-ray Disc media will ship in Europe in March 2006. Single-layer BD-RE (Blu-ray Disc Rewritable) media will be available in store from mid March and single-layer write-once BD-R (Blu-ray Disc Recordable) media will be available from April. Sony is also set to launch dual layer discs later this year.

The single-layer Blu-ray Disc Recordable (BNR25A) and Blu-ray Disc Rewritable (BNE25A) media offer a storage capacity of 25GB, more than five times that of a normal DVD and enough for approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes of video at a bit rate of 24Mbps, or 10 hours and 30 minutes at 5Mbps.1 The new generation media support 2X speed which equates to a data transfer rate of 72 Mbps (9 MB/s), making the discs suitable for video recording as well as data storage and file backup. In addition, Sony's Blu-ray Disc media will feature its unique AccuCORE technology as standard, ensuring reliable data recording, increased disc protection and enhanced durability.
If you'd like to read more, Sony's entire press release can be found here. Add a comment
According to an article at DigiTimes, Taiwan's CD-R manufactuers are not happy with Philips' Veeza licensing system. While Veeza cuts royalty charges, they system is hard to implement and is not enforced in countries like China and India.
Royal Philips Electronics' promotion of its Veeza licensing system for CD-R disc patents to Taiwanese optical disc manufacturers has been frustrated for the time being because none of the makers are willing to join it due to an overly-high royalty burden as well as unfair competition and exposure of business confidentiality issues, according to industry sources.
If you'd like to read more, additional the entire article can be found here. Add a comment
TDK Europe has announced that they've started shipping their 25GB BD-R and BD-RE media. Here's part of their press release:
TDK, a world leader in digital recording solutions, announced that it is to begin shipping 25GB recordable and rewritable Blu-ray Disc (BD) media across Europe and will follow with 50GB media in April. A pioneer of blue laser recording technology and founding member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, TDK is the first to market with bare Blu-ray Disc media.

Recommended Retail Pricing is set at 15 Euro for a 25GB BD-R (write once), 20 Euro for a 25GB BD-RE (rewritable), 35 Euro for a 50GB BD-R (write once) and 45 Euro for a 50GB BD-RE (rewritable). Expect to see the first BD media on shelves from April 06, in line with the first BD hardware availability.
As you can see, Blu-ray Disc media definitely isn't cheap, especially the dual layer, 50GB discs. If you'd like to read more, TDK's entire press release can be found here.< Add a comment
Ricoh has announced that they've started shipping samples of their BD-R and HD DVD-R media to hardware manufacturers. Thanks to Ricoh-developed inorganic recording materials, these new discs offer high reliability when both reading and writing.
 

Ricoh Co., Ltd has developed recordable disks for Blue-ray Disk and HD DVD, the next-generation DVD formats, and starts shipping samples to hardware manufacturers.

The samples to be shipped are BD-R and HD DVD-R, write-once disks for Blue-ray Disk and HD DVD respectively. They have a capacity of 25 GB (BD-R) and 15 GB (HD DVD-R), approximately three to five times that of current disks.

By employing highly sensitive inorganic recording materials and high-precision stampers newly developed for next-generation recordable DVDs, Ricoh was able to achieve high reliability when writing and reading data. This will provide an advantage in further speed increases and multilayer structures.
Ricoh plans to ship their newly developed BD-R and HD DVD-R to consumers by the end of the year. More information can be found here. Add a comment