The word “Cube” is a well known term in people’s everyday life.

When you type the word “Cube” in a Google search, you’ll see 86,800,000 results. When you search for “Cubic” in Google, you’ll see 33,300,000 results.

For entertainment you may recall the small “Rubik’s Cube” or some call it the “Magic cube”. It is said this small cubic toy is the world’s best-selling toy, with over 300,000,000 Rubik’s Cubes or comparable imitations sold worldwide. It was recently made popular again when Will Smith showed his magical Rubik’s Cube skills in the blockbuster 2006 movie “The Pursuit of Happyness”.

Rubik’s Cube (aka Magic Cube)

From the Olympic Games, we witnessed the mighty new generation building; Beijing National Aquatics Center, better known as the “The water Cube” or “[H2O]3”. The Water Cube held several swimming events as well as the amazing feats of swimmer Michael Phelps who set a new Olympic record with 8 Gold medals in the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.

The water cube night view

Michael Phelps

For everyday transportation needs, auto maker Nissan announced their new Electric powered vehicle, “Denki Cube”, during the NY International auto shows in March 2008.
The body incorporates Japanese words such as “Denki Jidosha” (meaning electric vehicle). This new electric car prototype is a Green earth concept meant to design a non polluting green vehicle.

Denki Cube

The term “CUBE” is takes on so many meanings and is reflective in our life style, fashion, entertainment and compact useful gadgets.

That’s why Vinpower Digital’s “The Cube” is designed for all duplicator users, but especially for those people with a “CUBE” sense of style and lifestyle. The Cube is a compact BD/DVD/CD automatic duplicator that is easy to set up and use with an attractive and useful cubic design.

The Cube fits in any office or cubicle and works unattended to make up to 25 copies per run. Plus at an incredibly low price point, The Cube fits nearly any budget. With 25 disc capacity and 1 or 2 recording drive(s), The Cubeâ„¢ gives you the ability to work on other matters with the confidence that your project will be duplicated quickly and reliably without breaking the bank.

Vinpower digital the Cube

The Cube may be small. But believe in me, it’s very mighty!

Recently I read a book about interior design which brought up some new ideas for me. With the changes of modern society, art and design have bonded in our lives. Nowadays, people have different standards and requirements for many items in life, such as dinnerware, furniture, and kitchen utensils. Originally, we only cared about the basic function of these tools. Gradually we added some modern designs and fashion elements to kitchenware and furniture for a more aesthetically pleasing look. For example, the first TV sets were very large bulky items which took up a lot of space in our living rooms. Now they have been redesigned as slim wall hanging units with flat screen displays that look more like art hung on the wall. With its new design, our living room has become more spacious and attractive, yet retaining its intended functionality of displaying televised programming.

In addition, a kitchen is no longer a small and individual area that only mom goes in and out of to prepare the family’s meals. Now, the kitchen takes on many more roles as a conversation room, party room, workroom, day care center, living room and a place with laughter and the (hopefully) pleasant aroma of food. We’ve come to expect our furniture and life equipment to not only be designed for utility but also for beauty and greater functionality.

The same is true for duplication equipment. In the past, we defined optical disc duplication towers as an industrial machine, more suitable for a small niche market. Now the duplicator market has grown and stepped out of the industrial facilities and into offices and homes. In order to capitalize on the growing popularization of duplication equipment and be in line with other CE products evolution to fit in to more visible environments, Vinpower Duplicator spent a lot of time and effort on the overall design and appearance. Our duplicator line is not only a machine for you to make copies of optical discs like CD’s, DVD’s or Blu-ray, but also a beautifully designed and crafted piece of art that can be proudly displayed and greater utilization.

This transformation started with our line of manual tower SharkCopier duplicators and has transitioned to our line of autoloaders as well. In August, we released our new product-THE CUBE. It is designed as a compact light weight robotic autoloader that is easy to transport and is attractive enough to display on a desk in an office. Plus at an incredibly low price point, The Cube fits nearly every budget. The Cube is a small but mighty addition to a growing line of aesthetically pleasing functional office duplication equipment.

Click the link below to see The Cube in action:

http://www.vinpowerdigital.com/NewsAndEvents/Video/Video.asp

When LightScribe first launched in 2004 (according to Wikipedia), it really did not take off as a viable solution in the duplication market right away. In fact it wasn’t until 2008 when LightScribe became truly adopted into the duplication market. Much of that has to do with the development of larger standalone tower duplicators developed by Vinpower Digital, but also due to a major reduction in media costs.

The new standalone towers from Vinpower Digital were a vehicle which made the technology more relevant in the duplication market because printing one off discs were too time consuming. By enabling up to 15 drives to print simultaneously, time became less of a factor allowing the technology to became a more excepted method of labeling CD’s and DVD’s.

Now that the hardware mitigated one barrier to entry, the second barrier, high prices, was a tough nut to crack. Fortunately the division behind the LightScribe technology was committed to its success and realized that the media pricing had to be within an acceptable price of inkjet or thermal printable discs. So they encouraged LightScribe disc manufacturers and sellers to bring the price within a range more palatable with the consumer.

Where LightScribe discs once costed upwards of $1 a disc initially, they are now available for less than $0.30 a disc which is well within range of standard printable media, especially when you factor in the cost of ink or thermal ribbon. In fact LightScribe has become the most cost effective publishing system if comparing the cost of hardware and consumables. If you factor in that an inkjet publishing system is upwards of $2,000 ~ $3,000 and a thermal publishing system is even higher, a few hundred dollar LightScribe tower saves a significant amount of money just from the initial purchase. Then you take into account the cost of ink or thermal ribbon and you have a huge cost savings going with LightScribe compared to more traditional disc printing.

So the choice is clear, especially in financially difficult times, duplicating and printing your disc titles using LightScribe is a far more viable and cost effective method.

Are you one of the growing masses to adopt a Blu-ray player and enjoy Blu-ray movie in all its high-definition glory? Here are some facts detailing how Blu-ray technology and the growing demand in the home video market are intertwined.

1) Capacity –
The Blu-ray Disc (BD) format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. It offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs.
A single-layer disc can hold 25GB.
A dual-layer disc can hold 50GB.
A multi-layer discs can allow the storage capacity to be increased to 100GB-200GB (25GB per layer).
This added capacity allows the content producer nearly endless options to create the best quality motion picture in new ways. Plus they can add more “must-see” end credit footage. A 50GB BD disc can hold 9 hours of high-definition (HD) video.

2) Resolution –
It’s not unusual for a typical household to own a 70” widescreen TV with the abiltity to display the HD format for family home viewing. In order to actually be able to watch TV in HD, your television must have a minimum resolution of 576 lines x 720 pixels @ 50Hz progressive (576p). HD can also be 720p (720 horizontal lines progressive), 1080i (1080 horizontal lines interlaced) or 1080p (1080 horizontal lines progressive).
The 1080p format is the latest and greatest, appearing in high-end television models designed for Blu-ray video players.

3) Language –
BD-RE has different layers to support multi-language selection in movies for global viewers and multi-language broadcasts. Standard DVDs for the US market may offer up to three forms of English subtitles: 1) SDH subtitles, 2) English subtitles, helpful for viewers who are hard-of-hearing and whose first language may not be English, and 3) closed caption data (transcription rather than a translation, and usually contains descriptions of important non-dialog audio as well as “sighs” or “door creaks”) that is decoded by the end-user’s closed caption decoder.
Blu-ray disc uses SDH subtitles as the sole method because technical specifications do not require HD to support closed captions. Some blu-ray discs, however, are said to carry a closed caption stream that only displays through standard definition connections.

4) Dolby 7.1 –
Dolby Digital, or AC-3, is the common version containing up to six discrete channels of sound, with five channels for normal-range speakers (20 Hz – 20,000 Hz) and one channel (20 Hz–120 Hz) for the subwoofer driving low-frequency effects. This is a format where the AC-3 bit stream is interleaved with the video and control bit streams. The AC-3 standard allows a maximum coded bit rate of 640 kbit/s. ATSC (digital TV standard) and DVD-Video discs are limited to 448 kbit/s. Blu-ray Discs, the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Microsoft Xbox game console can output an AC-3 signal at a full 640 kbit/s.
If you own a huge TV screen, you may also require a high sound definition. Dolby 7.1 takes over the DVD supported Dolby 5.1 for a cleaner and crisper sound.

5) MMC support –
Mandatory Managed Copy (MMC) will be part of the Blu-ray format. This feature will enable consumers to make legal digital copies of their Blu-ray movies that can be transferred for viewing on a home media center, streaming throughout your house, or even transferring to a portable player.

6) G-Java software –
G-java is part of G-creator which is a 2D and 3D Game and software creator which makes it possible to encrypt in today’s BD movies to include interactive fun and games other than watching the movie itself. For example, the BD movie ‘CARS’ comes with the game – CARFINDER and ‘Ratatouille’ comes with the game – GUSTEAU’S GOURMET.

Screen Shot of the CARS interactive game

Given all the benefits of Blu-ray over DVD, it’s only a matter of time before the entire industry switched to Blu-ray as the standard bearer. Are you ready?

In the Chinese culture, “Ghost Month” falls every year on the seventh month of the lunar calendar. The legend says that on this month the ghosts and spirits, including those of deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm. Because Chinese people worship their ancestors, Ghost month is meant to pay homage to their ancestors when the deceased visit the living.

During this month, adults and children face a lot of taboo and must be extremely careful. For example; it is bad to go swimming or play beside any deep water edge as the “water ghost” might drown you; children are not advised to wander around late at night as the “little ghost” might play pranks or possess the children.

The Ghost Festival is celebrated on the 15th night of the seventh lunar month. The conventional thinking of “philanthropy” in China has even been extended on this day to allow those “lonely, without wandering ghost descendants” to enjoy the zeal of the human world. Every household will worship and offer sacrifices to the ancestors and spirits of the unknown world, with food and drinks.

In Taiwan, we call these spirits the “good brothers” and on the Ghost Festival, we “pu du” or worship the realms of the unknown. On the evening of “pu du”, every house’s threshold will lay a table of bumper meals, where each meal has an incense stick on it. This is called the “door worship”. After the worship, “ghost money” is burnt for the spirits to spend and the offerings are removed.

The folk customs for “pu du” has certain conventions and taboos as well, for example, longan fruit are regarded as the “money roll money”, apple as “safe-peace”, dragon-fruit as “business winning streak”, asian-pears as “away from danger”, pomelo as “protection”. The taboo fruits like bananas, pears and plums are not worship together because the Chinese syllable for these items sound like “to beckon” and it is not advisable to beckon or welcome the “good brothers” to one’s own house.

Ghost Festival is one of the most important festivals celebrated among the Chinese culture. Hope everyone enjoys peace and joy!

For years there were only two options for personal disc printing, inkjet or thermal. Since inkjet printing was a cheaper printing option, it quickly became the more popular method. However thermal printing was able to find a lucrative niche in the market due better reliability. Thermal printing does not suffer the same drawbacks as inkjet printing which can bleed or smear when in contact with liquid plus the printed matter can be scratched easier than thermal. Both methods have controlled their respective realms in the market for quite some time with little to no competition, until now.

With the invention of LightScribe technology, a user can now print directly onto the label side of LightScribe capable discs using a laser. The benefits of this technology is that not only can a user create custom labels directly onto a disc, but the printed image will not smear, run, scratch and does not require any additional equipment to operate. All printing is performed through the same drive that performs the duplication process, so the overall expense of this printing method is far cheaper than the alternative methods.

Initially this technology was hampered by the fact that the drive needed to be tied to a computer in order to work. Typically a computer can only operate maximum 4 independent drives at a time. Since LightScribe printing is not as fast as the other methods, printing a single disc at a time was too time consuming and not suitable for a duplication market. With the help of Vinpower Digital, the LightScribe consortium was able to overcome this detriment by creating a fully standalone LightScribe version of the multi-drive tower. With standalone manual towers as large as 15 drives able to copy and/or print on LightScribe capable media simultaneously, the once inhibiting speed factor compared to other printing methods is no longer valid. Instead of waiting 5 ~ 15 minutes for a single printed LightScribe disc, the Vinpower Digital 15 drive LS duplicator can print 15 discs in the same amount of time averaging between 20 seconds to 2 minutes per disc.

If you combine the cost savings, negligible time difference and ease of use for LightScribe compared to the alternative, the choice is clear, LightScribe printing technology is the future!

Just looking at the clothes we wear and the food we eat and its easy to recognize that the “Brand” is one of the most important elements of marketing. Most customers would rather purchase the product with a strong brand name rather than a lesser known or generic alternative, because they think the quality is better than the unknown brand. That’s why it’s so critical to build strong branding through effective marketing activities to create a loyal following of customers. Because they all know branding could affect purchasing behavior.

If you pay attention to the everyday conversation of people at your work, your local coffee shop, etc., you would hear how effective “Branding” really is. You’ll notice how branded products just become part of our everyday speech when we mention particular things. For example, we often say,”I’ll MSN you”, and we don’t have to explain what msn is, it’s just understood by both parties. How’s that? That’s because Microsoft effectively marketed their instant messaging service to not only become popular and widely used, but that their brand can become part of our common lexicon. Furthermore, we a brand can become so strong that it will even become the verbiage used for an entire industry. Take Google for instance. Every one knows who Google is and the main focus of their business. So, when someone says, “Let’s Google it,” everyone knows what it means. The phrase “Let’s Google it” has all but replaced “Let’s search it on the internet.”
This is a strong indication that if we want to assess how strong a brand is or identify which brand is a leader in the industry, we could find out through the everyday conversation of people. This is the most direct and obvious way to observe brand loyalty and a brand’s impact on society.

Vinpower Digital is making a lot of headway at establishing itself as a strong brand in the standalone duplication market. In developing many new and unique functions for our duplicators and cooperating with large technology companies Vinpower Digital is becoming more broadly recognized globally. Some day we may even hear people say “Let’s Vinpower it!!” instead of “Let’s duplicate the discs” as part of their common speech. I think that would be very cool and I think it’s not a matter of can it happen but when it will happen!!

With all the hype surrounding Blu-ray and the larger capacity and better picture quality for HD video, the question may arise, what is the difference between Blu-ray disc technology and DVD disc technology. Well the below chart should shed some light on the primary differences.

Camaraderie outside the office leads to better production in the office. So let’s roll the ball!

Thanks god it’s Friday, let’s go bowling on Friday night!!

Many people may not know that bowling is a very old exercise. The bowling exercise has been a welcomed exercise for several years. Regarding the history of bowling, there have existed many forms of bowling, with the earliest dating back to ancient Egypt. Other instances where bowling was first seen can be traced to ancient Finland and Yemen, as well as in Germany around 300 A.D.

The first bowling game was brought to Taiwan by American soldier 60 years ago. It’s was a very popular exercise where the contestants can even win a sedan car if you score a perfect 300! For an added twist, Taiwanese players invented the “Sibala ball” which spins very quick like a UFO and can hit the pins harder so the bowler can score more. It’s awesome.

It’s important to maintain a disciplined office during the week so that we can better service our clients and provide quality products. Since we work so hard during the week, it’s important that we can enjoy the time we have off. To build a strong team, it’s also important that the members of the team get along and enjoy working together. For that reason, we like to have group activities that the members of the office can get out and “let their hair down” so to say. In doing so, we feel we are a more cohesive group that is better equipped to be productive and work together for a common goal during the week.

So we went to the “Asian Game” bowling hall which is a professional bowling hall, holding several professional tournaments. We divided into 2 teams, “O” team and “X” team. In this competition, the team with a total average greater than the rival will be the winner. Although team “O” scored more then team “X” before the 5th block, the game wasn’t over yet. Remember the story of the Turtle and the Hare? The turtle finally wins the race against the rabbit because the rabbit was too confident and went to sleep! So team “X” won the game in the end because they know the phrase “Never give up”!

It was a really fun evening and we all feel lucky that we have such good colleagues to hang out with on a Friday night. Just like in bowling, I’m certain that we will always be triumphant because we also live by the phrase “Never Give Up!”.

On a side note, we really love Mandy’s neice. She is really cute and looks just like the character “Boo” in Monsters, Inc. Judge for your self.

The health of the Blu-ray market seems to be an enigma to most people these days as there’s a lot of discussion, anticipation, and inquiries about the topic. However, are there adequate sales to back it up. I think the biggest misconception right now is that the Blu-ray market is slow and not progressing as anticipated compared to DVD’s inception. Recent research refutes that misconception and in reality, Blu-ray appears to be ahead of DVD in terms of adoption when compared at similar times in their release.

In fact, research from Futuresource is said to show that Blu-ray Disc hardware is outselling early DVD hardware and will continue to do so into the next decade.

Jim Bottoms, MD corporate development, Futuresource, says: “Focusing on like-for-like coverage of Western Europe and comparing the first few years of uptake, the early indications are that BD player sales are running way ahead of DVD after the same time period”.

“2008 represents year three for BD and here at Futuresource Consulting, we anticipate more than 10 million players, including PS3, in use by the end of this year. Looking back to DVD’s early years, we see that closer to 1.5 million DVD players were installed by the end of year three.”

In a survey conducted by Sony Computer Entertainment America, results for the first half of May 2008 indicate that 52% of almost 3,000 PlayStation 3 (PS3) owners plan to purchase six or more BD titles in the next 12 months. Approximately 50% prefer to exclusively purchase or rent movies in BD format, even if they have to wait longer for the title release, and over 40% report increased movie viewing since the purchase of a PS3.

Statistics from the Redhill Group compiled on behalf of Home Media Magazine indicate that, as of May 18, 2008, Blu-ray software sales in the US exceeded the 11 million mark. In the first quarter of 2007, Blu-ray sales for day-and-date titles represented 1.7% of total sales for the top 10 selling titles, in comparison to the DVD version of the same title. In the first quarter of 2008, that percentage rose to 14.3%.

The Entertainment Merchants Association predicts in their 2008 Annual Report on the Home Entertainment Industry that Blu-ray sales will surpass standard DVD in 2012 and be about $9.5 billion. The report found that sales of nearly 9 million high-definition discs in 2007 generated more than $260 million in consumer spending. The EMA believes in 2012, Blu-ray Disc sales will be around $9.5 billion.

Based on these statistics, it’s clear that not only is Blu-ray a relevant and growing format, but looks destined to gain even more of a significant foothold in the digital optical media market. There’s no question that the PS3 has had a major impact in the growth of the format, but the important factor is not based on the method of use but rather through the sheer adoption of the format, regardless of the player.