It’s commonly known that Blu-ray burner drives and media are considerably more expensive compared to it’s standard CD/DVD counterparts. Recently, some insights have been shown on Taiwan TV talk shows on how Taiwan will help worldwide consumers reduce this cost barrier issue for Blu-ray.

Taiwan manufacturers of Blu-Ray media have put in long-term investment and patent funds for BD-RE approx. 8 years ago. With more than 20 years experience in 3C, Taiwan’s market entrance will definitely lower the BD-RE media pricing. A major reason for the lowered costs from Taiwanese manufacturer is because they already own the world patented “Auto-Balance”, Laser Head and Loader and have each obtained laboratory grade certification for 4x BD-R SL and 2x BD-RE SL formats. The only preventative factors until now, is that they had not invested in the equipment necessary for the massive production of BD media.

The primary obstacle in the pricing of Blu-ray media is the “Royalty” fees that media manufacturers have to pay for the right to produce it. That occupies 1/10 of the Blu-Ray price. Shanghai United Optical Disc has completed the establishment of its first production line for CBHD (China Blue High-definition Disc), China’s self-developed high-definition optical disc format. Royalty fees to produce licensed CBHD players will be about US$8.10, much lower than BD licensing rates, the industry sources in Taiwan indicated. CBHD has not won support from leading movie studios in Hollywood and this is expected to render the format at a significant disadvantage in competition with BD, the sources pointed out.

Although there is a keen interest in HD content at the moment, big volume shipments are still a long way off. Makers agree that there is not much potential of mass production until they see support from solution providers, especially from chipmakers and design houses in Taiwan. So when the major Taiwanese media manufacturers cut in, we’ll see significant reductions in Blu-ray media pricing which will carry over to all aspects of the Blu-ray format.

With the adoption of the HD capability of Blu-ray, new industries will pop up as off shoots from this new technology. An example of this is a new make-up line meant to reduce the exposure of imperfections on the human face that the HD cameras will pick up with greater resolution.

Cosmetics Company, Cargo, recently debut a new Blu_ray make-up line specifically for hiding physical imperfections on high-def video shoots. No, not quite smooth enough yet!?