Taiwanese Company to Mass Produce Rewritable HD Discs

Lucas123 writes "Ritek Corp. plans to start mass producing BD-RE and HD DVD-RE next quarter. 'Initially, however, BD-RE and HD DVD-RE discs will be pricey. The average cost per disc will remain around $10 in retail outlets, despite production costs of around $5 per disc, said Eric Ai, a Ritek representative. Prices won't likely come down until other mass disc producers in Taiwan win accreditation to make the discs, and ramp up volumes.'"

Despite?

[raehl]

$10 retail on something that costs $5 to produce is pretty standard.

Yay

[blackmonday]

This was the same story for CDR, DVDR, etc. Eventually, a spindle will be available for 12 bucks at Fry's. I am hoping it's not a long wait, this kind of storage will be great for those of us who make frequent backups of our home directories.

Re:$10 for 20GB+ R/W is cheaper than a thumb drive

[Eccles]

It's especially cheap compared to the value of that time. I've been trying to back up photos on DVDs, but with the amount of pics and movies I can take with a 2 GB card, it's a pretty time-consuming process. On the other hand, with 500 GB external drives for ~$140, that's less than $6 for 20 GB, so that's still a cheaper option at the moment.

Ritek is Taiwanese - straight from their corporate

[not5150]

This is straight from the corporate website. Confusing Taiwanese with Thai can get you shot in certain parts of the world :) Corporate Name RITEK Corporation Establish Date December 29, 1988 Date of IPO April 23, 1996 Headquarter No. 42, Kuan-Fu N. Road, Hsin-Chu Industrial Park, 30316, Taiwan Employees 3723(Q4, 2005) Capital 698 million USD (Q4, 2005)

This just in...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot editors cant distinguish between Thailand and Taiwan.

I dont have an account, didnt feel like creating one just to point out American idiocy.

Re:Ritek is Taiwanese - straight from their corpor

[Anonymous Coward]

"Confusing Taiwanese with Thai can get you shot in certain parts of the world :)"

So can confusing Taiwan and China :P

Re:Despite?

[UbuntuDupe]

Yeah, exactly. Imagine for a minute all the highly mechanized third-world sweatshops that pay pennies per hour. It can't cost more than a dollar to make a shirt, and what does it retail in America for? $35.

100% markup doesn't seem bad by comparison.

RE why not RW?

[jeffy210]

RE? Short for REwritable? Why in the world can't they just keep things uniform and stick with the RW designation. Does it really need a new acronym? What is the major different that would warrant that.

I'm not exactly jumping up and down

[uradu]

Until regular old read-only drives become cheap and plentiful--nay, let's just even say available for now--my enthusiasm is somewhat dampened.

Price

[Dan East]

"The average cost per disc will remain around $10 in retail outlets, despite production costs of around $5 per disc"

Of course, the higher the price of media, the less likely people will make backups of their HD movies. At $10 a crack, it's not too much more to buy another copy of the movie. I'm sure that benefit to copyright holders is factored into the cost of the media to some degree. The story makes mention of an accreditation process, which the studios undoubtedly have influence over (they had a say in developing the standard itself). Thus if the media isn't sold at the price the industry wants, the manufacturer could suddenly have problems maintaining their accreditation.

Dan East

RW?

[EnsilZah]

Does anyone actually use RW media?
I only occasionally see it in stores and have never seen actual discs used in the wild.