This was my first visit to Europe for the CeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany, so exciting!! Especially since CeBIT is the biggest IT tradeshow in the world.

Even though this was my first experience at CeBIT, Vinpower has participated at CeBIT for the past 5 years. It’s a great opportunity to introduce our newest products to our European customers at the show.

To arrive at Hannover, we flew into Zurich, Switzerland and transited on to Hannover. I saw beautiful Alps from the plane, that’s wonderful. The apartment we stayed is quite near to the “messe nord” (the CeBIT event venue). The weather was quite nice, no snow.~~

At our booth, sharkcopiers and me!

Our autoloader duplicators always catch people’s eyes causing them to visit our booth! We displayed the Cube, Titan lite, and Titan supreme models…from 25 -1000 disc capacity.

We are launching many different kinds of duplicators this year which we received very positive feedback from the attendees during the show. *happy*

My pink pants~ Love it!
My colleagues cannot stop singing the “Pink Panther” theme song around me when I wore it. @#$R$…

Although the Chinese New Year has passed and all we have are our memories, this past New Years celebration was even more special because of the global economic hardships that have affected us all. It’s a testament to how we’ve persevered and managed to forge ahead even under difficult circumstances. This is a direct reflection on the employees within the company and how we have all stuck together to make our products even better and more desirable so that we can gain greater market share and continue to prosper in these difficult times. This is in honor to those I work with and how we’ve all come together professionally and socially, especially in this case.

Say Good Bye to 2008, we welcome 2009~~

In celebrating the Chinese New Year, we had our annual dinner party, or as we say “Spring Wine”, at a Korean BBQ restaurant in the Los Angeles region of Southern California.

Guys, let’s have dinner

Everyone within the company are welcome to join the festivities. We had lots of guests ranging in age from 9 months to 50. But I would say it’s also a beauty contest, as I am working with handsome men and beautiful women.

First up, the male group~

Our sales guy and R&D leader, or u can say the sexist guy and smartest guy.

Our valuable R&D team showing the mood of the evening.

This expression is so FUNNY ~~ Thanks to our production line guys to make sure we have good quality products shipped to our customers~

Here comes the baby group

See how cute they are. There are no winners or losers in the kid’s world, so I will say they’re all winners of the baby group.

Best things always comes last,

Beauties from Taiwan. say chees~~

We have beauty with big eyes and with see through lace back dress beauties….. What’s that guy looking at?
I can announce it’s best of the year.

Great papa and mama group,

It’s a wonderful night and thanks for all members who joined this meal.
See you next year~~

Happy Chinese new year~

Returning from exhibiting at the CES trade show in Las Vegas, which took place Thursday, January 8th – Sunday, January 11th, 2009, it was noticeably lacking in attendance this year, particularly over the weekend. Yet, for those of us in the manufacturing realm, there was a higher concentration of influential buyers and key contacts among those who did attend. So in that case, the show boasted more quality contacts over quantity of contacts, at least for us.

In addition to our showcase of standalone CD/DVD, Blu-ray and LightScribe capable duplicators from the Vinpower Digital line as well as the exceptional Xerox Disc Duplicators with the PC connect “Drag & Drop” feature, we displayed some new products for 2009.

One of the products was the TITAN lite LightScribe standalone autoloader with the only automated flipping mechanism which allows the unit to become a fully automated LS publishing system! This system can operate as a standard standalone CD/DVD duplicator with LightScribe printing capabilities in 100 or 200 disc capacity or as a complete automated copy and LS print station with 100 disc capacity.

Another new product unique to Vinpower Digital on display was our new Network Capable towers. These systems can be connected to an internal network using standard LAN/Ethernet connections so that an entire office has the benefit of sending their image files and/or LightScribe print files to the duplicator.

Plus we showcased our line of Blu-ray duplicators as well as Blu-ray media which is becoming a much bigger player in the duplication market now that the pricing is more reasonable and the format has been adopted by a wider consumer market. We also exhibited our full range of SATA and IDE/PATA controllers for manual tower or robotic autoloader duplicators.

Overall it was a successful show and we look forward to a renewed and more densely populated with quality attendees, CES 2010.

Around this time, the Western society is celebrating Christmas or Hanukah and having big feasts. In the Chinese culture, the same time span represents the winter solstice which is a very important solar term in the Chinese Lunar calendar.

Being a traditional holiday as well, it is still celebrated quite often in many regions. Early during the Spring and Autumn period, 2500 years ago, Winter solstice was first determined as the Chinese traditional solar term among the total 24 terms. In a Gregorian calendar, it is around Dec 22nd or 23rd.

Midwinter day is the very day in the Northern hemisphere with the shortest day and longest night year-round. After it, daytime will become increasingly longer and the coldest climate will invade all the places on the Northern part of the globe. We Chinese always call it “JinJiu”, which means once Winter solstice comes, we will meet the coldest time ahead.

Ancient China paid great attention to this holiday, regarding it as a big event. There was the saying that “Winter solstice holiday is greater than the spring festival”. Nowadays, many regions still celebrate it as a big holiday. Northerners may have dumplings and raviolis that day while southerners may have dumplings made by rice and long noodles. Some places even have the tradition to offer sacrifices to the heaven and earth.

In all words, whether you are going to celebrate Christmas or Winter solstice holiday, I wish you all to have a good time and enjoy yourself with family and friends.

IT Month is the most important exhibition for consumers in Taiwan. The Vendors will introduce new product releases at the show and lower their prices to encourage consumers to buy immediately. This is important now especially since the whole world is under an economic sag. Taipei is first stop of the tour and moves on to Taichung, Kaohsiung ,Tainan. In total, the traveling vendor exhibition attracted around two million visitors throughout the duration of the show in 2007.

The president, Mr. Ma ,in the middle attend the 2008 opening ceremony.

Samsung promoted their LCD TV 5 & 6 Series and BD player at the exhibition but took different approaches in their sales strategy. For example, the original price of the Samsung「BD-P1500」BD Player is NTD22,900 (approx. USD $690). However, the consumer can get a price of NTD14,900 (approx. USD $450) if they buy a LCD TV along with the BD player. Samsung is offering the consumer to get a free「BD-P1500」or get a discounted price of NTD6,990 (approx. USD $200) depending on which LCD TV they Buy.

BD Player of Samsung「BD-P1500」

Also during the show, Pioneer introduced a new Blu-ray Disc. It is transparent with a 400GB capacity (16 layers of 25GB each). Sure it can hold an amazing amount of data, but at what’s sure to be an astronomical price, we’ll have to see if it is worth it or not.

400GB transparent Blu-ray Disc

Although, it doesn’t matter whether the news is about new products or promotion of existing products, we can tell that the Blu-ray market is improving and will have an influence on the end user in the near future.

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!?

The Middle East is a blossoming market with tremendous potential and growth in the CE field. It’s for that reason that Vinpower attended the 2008 Gitex trade show in Dubai, U.A.E October 19 ~ 23. We were located in Hall 3, booth number 332, displaying various standalone optical disc duplication products. We showed our new SATA controllers, Daisy-Chain towers, SharkCopier duplicators with LightScribe capabilities, new autoloader series like the Cube1 & 2, the market leading Xerox duplicators, CD/DVD cover printers, and so on.

Dubai’s GITEX is the largest consumer electronics exhibition of its kind in the Middle East giving it great prominence in the region. Vinpower had their eyes set on the Dubai market for many years and this is the fifth year that Vinpower has participated in the show. By providing high-end solution in duplication market, Vinpower has been regarded as the best quality manufacturer in the market.

After a successful Gitex, Vinpower plans to introduce more products in the near future.

For the 4th year in a row, Vinpower Digital exhibited its latest line of duplicator products at the 104th China Canton fair. It’s one of the most important exhibitions in China which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors through the duration of the show.

104th Canton Fair

Through greater exposure from the Canton province news media interview at Vinpower Digital’s booth, more international visitors can obtain information about these new “gadgets” for new BD opportunity in the Chinese market.

Courtesy by GZ Daily new

Vinpower Digital caught a lot of people’s eyes while exhibiting in the consumer electronics product hall with our unique and impressive products. Take the SharkCopier Daisy Chain units for example, which can link several towers together which can produce a large amount of copied discs from a single master. Also, the Titan and Cube autoloader series with Blu-ray drives was a big head turner and is the best solution in the future for optical storage.

These units garnered a lot of attention because in July, the Blu-ray Disc Association and CESI Technology announced the establishment of China’s first Blu-ray Disc Testing Center.

The first China-made Blu-ray music video disc, Ai Tu Lan, was released in April, 2008.

The center will test BD-ROM movie players from Chinese manufacturers and provide data to the BDA. This will shorten the lead time for product development and market launch of fully compliant BD products for Blu-ray Disc product manufacturers. The more popular the BD market is, we believe the price will become more acceptable for common consumers and will raise up the entire market for BD duplication equipment.

Soon we will participate in trade shows in Hong Kong and Dubai in the U.A.E. Both of these shows attract a great deal of attendees from the Middle East. I imagine when most people think of the Middle East these days they only have images of conflict and oil. But in reality, most of the countries in the Middle East are stable and looking towards investments beyond fossil fuels.

This will be the 4th year that we have participated in the Gitex show in Dubai, and we’ve found that not only are the attendees very progressive, but that they are anxious to adopt new technology and find new products to buy and sell. In fact the city of Dubai is looking beyond their oil wells and into becoming one of the primary tourist destinations in the world let alone the Middle East. With their ever expanding communities, office buildings, tourist attractions and cultural offerings, this region is attracting more and more industry and capital.

We will once again be exhibiting at the Gitex trade show October 2008 (Hall: 3 Booth: 332) and if you can find time to attend, you’ll see a region hungry to develop new markets and adopt new products.

Even as the Blu-ray Association touts the rapid expansion and adoption of the Blu-ray format, there are concerns that the players are still priced too high for the broader market. So there are companies looking to take advantage of the low cost player market such as Memorex which intends to release its new MVBD-2510 player for $269 when it ships in November of this year. Just in time for the Christmas rush, this unit seems well positioned to further increase the Blu-ray market share compared to the common DVD.