Audio Video News

German manufacturer Singulus was quite excited at their annual general meeting last week. Singulus is the market leader of optical disc production equipment. In other words, they make the machines that make Blu-ray discs.

They announced that they've received orders for twenty-one Blu-ray dual layer machines during the first quarter of 2008 and there were more orders for the second quarter as well. An unnamed customer in the U.S. just received the first Dual Layer Blu-ray disc machine.

What do these numbers indicate?

According to Stefan A. Baustert, CEO of Singulus, "This means that the orders for Blu-ray in the first year of the dual layer technology already by far exceeded the volume at the start of the DVD eleven years ago with 17 machines."  Blu-ray can only hope to achieve the success of DVD.

As sales of Blu-ray discs increase, hopefully the prices of hardware will come down. Singulus mentions that the addition of features such as BD-Live could help reduce prices too. The BD-Live function of Men In Black includes interactive features such as a game with questions about the movie.-Leslie Shapiro

Singulus Press Release