January 27, 2017 is the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year, the Year of the Rooster. Whether or not you celebrate the Chinese New Year, everyone at Vinpower wishes you much prosperity and good health throughout the New Year.

Please be aware that the Taiwan and China offices will be closed Friday, January 27, through Wednesday, February 1, in observance of the Chinese New Year. If you have any requirements that require attention from one of these offices, please contact us prior to the offices shutting down for the holiday. Otherwise, any issues or if you need to reach a representative during the time the offices are closed, please contact a member of the US Vinpower office or EU sales office and we will be happy to assist you.

For more details on any of the products that Vinpower carries, please visit our website at www.vinpowerdigital.com, or speak with an official Vinpower representative near you.

When the original 1080p Blu-ray was first announced, the adoption rate was not as quick as the industry had hoped for. There were many reasons for the initial slow adoption rate, including the customers reluctance to upgrade their existing TV’s and DVD players, the perceived lack of clarity and definition over the prevailing DVD, the uncertainty of the format wars between Blu-ray and HD DVD, or any other number of reasons. The fact is that the growth of Blu-ray was much slower than expected.

Fast forward to 2016 and the introduction of the new 4K Ultra Hi-Def Blu-ray (UHD BD) and the situation has changed dramatically. According to data from the Bu-ray Disc Association (BDA), US consumers bought 1.8 million UHD Blu-ray discs in 2016, along with 300,000 UHD Blu-ray players. That is a solidly impressive number for a format that hasn’t fully rolled out and a number of the most popular players, including the Sony Playstation, do not support UHD content yet. In fact, the BDA declared that UHD BD has sold 3 times faster than standard Blu-ray at its launch.

This again tells me, and should show you, that optical discs are not going to be obsolete and that consumers still enjoy and will continue to purchase physical media, like UHD BD discs, rather than just rely on the cloud to deliver content. So when you hear that discs are dead, tell them you’ve heard that rumor before and that you’re not buying it!

For more details about Vinpower’s offerings, please visit our website www.vinpowerdigital.com, or contact a Vinpower representative near you.

Thank you to everyone that visited our booth at the 2017 CES trade show. Once again, Vinpower received great feedback from the show floor and took a number of meetings with valued customers and vendors alike. This year, we introduced a number of new products and offering, like the upcoming secure flash drive, which can protect information stored on it from falling into the wrong hands. In addition, we introduced the upcoming official AACS Blu-ray Copy Protection through standalone duplicators and much more.

If you weren’t able to visit us at CES, we hope that you will be able to meet us at one of our upcoming trade shows, such as:
• NAB trade show in Las Vegas, NV, April 24 – 27,
• Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, May 30 – June 3,
• or any number of other exhibits we will attend throughout the year.

For more details on any of the products exhibited at CES, or anything that Vinpower carries, please visit our website at www.vinpowerdigital.com, or speak with an official Vinpower representative near you.

There was a recent article by Peter Suderman, titled; Why DVDs and Blu-rays remain essential in the age of streaming. In this article, Mr. Suderman showcases how streaming cannot produce the exceptional sound quality and the hi-resolution picture brilliance that is commonplace with HD video content stored on Blu-ray optical discs. The gist of the article is that there are a number of reasons why a physical disc is better than simply using a streaming service, however the two most prevalent is that streaming cannot capture the true video and surround sound quality that a 4k Ultra HD (UHD) Blu-ray disc can provide.

With TV sizes increasing to such large dimensions and surround sound capability increasing to rival that of the actual movie theater experience, it doesn’t matter if your content can’t take advantage of your hardware’s capability. In order to stream true UHD, there are two factors to consider, firstly, the internet and wifi capacity and quality in the area that the streaming would take place. If the viewer doesn’t have the bandwidth or signal strength to stream 4k, they simply won’t be able to watch at all or there could be a number of buffering (freezing) issues that would detract from the viewing experience. Secondly, for those that do have the capability to fully stream 4k, in order to stream 4k efficiently, it has to be compressed, which then reduces the final products full capability. This is mostly evident in the darker hues of color and the full dynamic sound quality.

So whether you are an audio/video aficionado or just a casual viewer, to get the true UHD experience, you must have physical media. I don’t see this changing in the near future as content will only become denser and require greater and greater bandwidth or higher compression to stream properly, which will have degradation of quality to some level or another. That is why Vinpower will continue to focus on physical media and methods to produce exceptional high quality duplication of any digital content.

For more details about Vinpower’s offerings, please visit our website, www.vinpowerdigital.com, or contact a Vinpower representative near you.