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TDK begins shipping Blu-ray Disc 25GB and 50GB recordable and rewritable media - full range on show at CeBIT

Exclusive material formulations and manufacturing processes deliver bit-perfect recording and playback

March 2006 – 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.

The revolutionary single-sided discs are bare, cartridge-free media. The 25GB products are single layer whereas the 50GB products have a dual layer recording material structure. TDK first shipped mass production samples in December 2005, and with the subsequent issuance of the relevant licenses, the company immediately commenced full force manufacturing.

The full TDK range of Blu-ray Disc media will be on display during CeBIT 2006 (9th-15th March) on the following partner stands:


“TDK is pleased to be the first to market with bare Blu-ray Disc media, which can be counted among the most significant product introductions in the company’s distinguished 70 year history,” said Jean-Paul Eekhout, European Director of Corporate Strategy. “TDK has been involved in the development of blue laser recording technology since 1998, and TDK innovations such as hard coating and our inorganic recording material have played an essential role in making this revolutionary new format a reality. From backing up today’s large capacity hard drives and servers to authoring and recording high definition video and sharing high resolution digital image collections, TDK Blu-ray Discs set new standards in recording and playback by offering unprecedented capacities, fast transfer rates and revolutionary durability.”

Making Blu-ray Discs a reality
TDK Blu-ray Discs are manufactured to the highest quality standards at the company’s Chikumagawa Techno Factory in Japan. Fitted out with state of the art technology, the Chikumagawa factory is poised to lead the charge on optical media development well into the future. TDK heavily committed its worldwide engineering resources to Blu-ray, and has created new formulations and manufacturing techniques that constitute revolutionary milestones in recording technology.

Blu-ray Discs were originally released in Japan in April of 2003 with a protective cartridge. The cartridge was necessary in order to protect the recording material, which is manufactured close to the Blu-ray Disc’s surface in order to realise the disc’s high density recording capabilities. TDK pioneered hard coating technology, eliminating the need for cumbersome cartridges.

Every TDK Blu-ray Disc includes DURABIS2; the world’s most advanced and most protective hard coating formulation. DURABIS2 increases the scratch resistance of Blu-ray Disc media by a factor of 100, as demonstrated in rigorous testing. DURABIS2 also resists fingerprints to help eliminate errors caused by disc surface smudges. Because TDK’s DURABIS2 coating technology rapidly discharges static electricity, the discs also resist the accumulation of dust, a potential source of recording and playback errors. TDK Blu-ray Discs provide absolute reliability for perfect recording and playback every time.

The high-sensitivity inorganic recording material utilised by TDK for the write-once type BD-R is completely different than the recording materials used for CD or DVD. Unlike the organic recording materials used in other media, the TDK Blu-ray Discs’ inorganic material is impervious to light. This makes the discs exceptionally well suited for archival. Composed of copper and silicon, TDK’s exclusive CuSi recording material delivers remarkable, long-lasting performance. The recording material enables fast recording and playback speeds and also makes it possible to realise massive capacities through multi-layering.

For TDK’s rewritable BD-RE media, a specially designed high-sensitivity phase change recording material is utilised. The material is so stable that a TDK Blu-ray Disc shows virtually no performance degradation even after it has been overwritten 10,000 times. The 25GB and 50GB BD-R and BD-RE discs offer 2x (72Mbps) rated recording speed.

A 0.1-millimeter thick cover layer comprises the Blu-ray Disc’s outermost internal surface, and the recording material resides beneath it. During recording, the laser passes through the cover layer in its path to the recording layer. Absolute uniformity in the thickness of the cover layer is critical to ensuring precise laser tracking, which is required for reliable performance.

To achieve total uniformity in the cover layer’s thickness, TDK developed an exclusive Spin Coating manufacturing process. With TDK Spin Coating, the cover layer is spun onto the disc at a high rate of speed, ensuring even dispersal of the material. High precision stacking technology further ensures reliability by consistently overlaying disc layers with the utmost precision.

TDK’s Blu-ray Disc roadmap extends the format’s capabilities even further, proving that Blu-ray is truly future-ready. TDK technologies have already enabled creating 100GB, four-layer Blu-ray Disc prototypes with blazing 216Mbps (6x) speed. The company is on the verge of creating the world’s first 200GB Blu-ray Disc prototype.

Specifications

Item	Unit	BD-R25	BD-R50	BD-RE25	BD-RE50
Type	―	Write-once		Rewritable
Recording capacity	GB	25 (single-layer)	50 (dual-layer)	25 (single-layer)	50 (dual-layer)
Recording wavelength	nm	405 (blue-violet laser)
Disc diameter	mm	120
Disc thickness	mm	1.2
Cover layer thickness	mm	0.1
Track pitch	μm	0.32 (group recording)
Data transfer rate	Mbps	36(1x)/72(2x)
Reflectivity	％	12~24	4~8	12~24	4~8
Linear velocity	m/s	4.9(1x)/9.8(2x)

* Dimensional specifications are nominal.


About TDK Recording Media Europe
TDK Recording Media Europe, a subsidiary of TDK Corporation, Japan with sales of 6.2 billion U.S. dollars (Apr 04 - Mar 05 period), is a leading producer of recording and playback solutions as well as a publisher of quality entertainment software. Its product range encompasses tape and disc-based media for practically all established formats, as well as speakers and headphones. In Bascharage, Luxembourg, TDK has one of the world’s most sophisticated plants for recording media products in the world. Sales and Marketing functions are located in Ratingen, Germany.

For more information about TDK Recording Media products, go to: http://www.tdk-europe.com

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