Full stories are posted on One to One On-Line at http://www.prostudio.com/oto.
DVD Breaks New Ground At Hong Kong REPLItech Show
The latest news from the DVD/CD manufacturing exhibition, REPLltech Asia, taking place in Hong Kong is that several new products that will have a major impact on the DVD and CD/CD-R manufacturing market have been unveiled and announced at the show. Nimbus Technology & Engineering's is previewing information on its new self-contained laser beam recorder mastering system. Krauss-Maffie has also shown its Triathlon CD/DVD-5 production system which can produce DVD-5s in under 3 seconds- and the whole system measures just 1.2m x 1.2m x 1.6m. Whilst DVD is still grabbing the headlines, it is CD-R manufacturing that is generating the business interest. Both Tapematic and Robi have announced new CD-R making systems. Tapematic's 'Classic' and Robi's 'Jade' are both targeting the explosion in the CD-R manufacturing that is happening , with many of the new CD-R factories opening in Asia. In one of the conference streams, the MPAA condemned the arrival of DeCSS, copy protection hack. And before the show, BPS ran a separate DVD Symposium highlighting some of the key issues facing the Asian market. BPS Symposium Highlights The Technological Power Of Asia Before the show opened, BPS ran its BPS DVD technology seminar, a one day event concentrating on DVD developments in Asia. Although there were no surprises, the seminar did give a view on how advanced the Asian DVD market is becoming. For a start, the Chinese Shanghai Institute of Optics is already working on HD-DVD systems and beyond, and is evidently going to play its own part in the development of post-DVD technologies, with near-field optical recording systems offering anywhere between 20 and 50 GB per layer. One of the highlights of the symposium was PJ Leone's realistic assessment of the trading conditions in Hong Kong, especially in relation to piracy and region coding. Leone, working for Columbia Tristar, Sony Pictures Entertainment said that region coded players were virtually impossible to find in the Hong Kong market. The 'universal' nature of the market has meant that virtually all available DVD titles, from the US, Japan and Europe are available on the island via parallel importing. The lesson to be learnt he says is that the film companies should be working towards simultaneous worldwide releasing. Pirates offer the ultimate in competition , but already the film companies are beginning to compete with the pirates on their own terms. ""You can buy 6 to eight VCDs for around $100 from the pirates, but you accept that half of those will be virtually unwatchable. You can now buy 3-4 legitimate VCDs for $100, so in reality we are competing on cost, and we have the quality. At the moment pirate DVDs are $100 for 3, which we currently can't compete with, but we will be getting close to there soon."" Source: One To One