TheImpressiveXSony will cut around 250 jobs from the recordable media business manufacturing hub and will gradually cease production of optical discs, including Blu-ray discs.
ryperApparently “recordable media” here means the kind you can record on at home, e.g. CD-R, DVD-R.
? . . . as opposed to - ?
As opposed to the discs movies are sold on.
Ah! Yes. Hm. Well then . . . where do distributors get theirs from? Not Sony, presumably?
Pressed discs have a completely different manufacturing method
? Did not know that. I assumed they were essentially WORMs but otherwise identical. Do they not use the same laser or something like that?
Pressed discs (like movies) are physically… pressed. They make a metal mould which is then stamped into melted plastic to make the pits and lands and then coated with a metal film to make the reflected backing, filling in the pits. This makes manufacturing of millions of disks extremely cheap since it takes seconds per disc. Burning commercial disks individually in thousands of burners would be way too slow/expensive.
Wow just like vinyl, sort of huh? That’s fascinating, I never considered it.
Exactly like vinyl!
This is why when when CDs originally came out, the industry kept saying “soon CDs will be super cheap since they’re so much cheaper than manufacturing tapes!” (which really DO need to be dubbed linearly, even though they can be done at like 10x speed in digital high-speed dubbers) before they realized people were still perfectly happy paying $15 for a disc.
This is also why they kept trying to make laserdisc (and RCA’s CED) be a thing, since they were cheaper to mass manufacture by stamping than prerecorded video tape’s slow dubbing process.
before they realized people were still perfectly happy paying $15 for a disc.
Heh, well i dunno about ‘happy’, i mean they did get sued. I think I still have my check for $7 somewhere . . .
5 Music Companies Settle Federal Case On CD Price-Fixing
Federal Trade Commission announces settlement of antitrust case against nation's five largest music companies; says there should now be significant price cuts for compact discs; two-year probe found music companies used illegal marketing agreements to end price war, inflate prices of compact discs and sharply restrict ability of retailers to offer discounts; FTC officials estimate consumers were overcharged $500 million over last four years; no fines will be levied in settlement, but companies agree not to make any such marketing agreements; lawyer representing one of music companies says companies decided to settle case because disputed marketing agreements are becoming outdated since they do not apply to sales of CD's on Internet; photo (M)
I would have loved laserdiscs. The large format for art, all futuristic lookin’ - but all media degrades so maybe M-disc in laserdisc size? We’ll probably have crystal storage before then i guess.