Rimage Spearheads Blu-ray Disc Acceptance In Professional Applications

[The following is a release from Rimage]

September 15, 2008

Rimage, the leading manufacturer of on-demand disc production systems, has pioneered the professional use of Blu-ray in the production of customized optical media on-demand. Being an early member of BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association), the company presented its first system utilizing Blu-ray drives in spring 2006 at NAB in Las Vegas and introduced the first dedicated high-volume production system, Rimage's 8100N BD, in October the same year. Implementing Blu-ray technology in automated disc production systems effectively, is more complex than purely upgrading a DVD recorder to Blu-ray. The complete system architecture has to be designed to stream and convert the huge data volume generated for multiple Blu-ray drives, especially when producing customized, one-of-a-kind discs. Rimage's "Adaptive Streaming Architecture" is uniquely designed to deal with the above challenges. In combination with a powerful embedded industrial PC, it achieves maximum throughput and recorder utilization while at the same time reducing load on the client workstation, eliminating redundant storage and minimizing data traffic on the network. The early adopters of Blu-ray with on-demand disc production systems come from software development and video production. Stefan Exner, Managing Director of Rimage Europe, states: "These companies have to efficiently distribute content that exceeds the storage capabilities of dual layer DVDs like in high definition television or they have to provide discs for gaming consoles which have pioneered the Blu-ray introduction in consumer electronics." Since Blu-ray has become the de facto standard early 2008, Rimage faces a significant increase in orders for Blu-ray systems despite the still high price for printable recordable Blu-ray media. With the expected price reduction for Blu-ray discs, the market acceptance will pick up driven by new applications like off-line archiving. "A lot of our customers will start with Blu-ray once the media prices have dropped", Exner says. As all N-Versions of Rimage's Producer and Professional Series are Blu-ray enabled, customers will be able to protect today's investment by installing an easy upgrade. Rimage will introduce the most recent member of its Blu-ray products, Rimage 6100N, at the International Broadcast Convention in Amsterdam from September 12 thru 16, rounding up the company's Blu-ray offering. The system is designed for medium to low throughput combined with highest standards regarding availability, uptime and flexibility to meet the requirements in video production and archiving.

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