Sony DADC started its mass production of Blu-ray discs in the USA last week and it says it has a capacity at up to 750 000 single layer discs a month. Sony will manufacture the new media over three product lines which together are capable of 25 000 discs per day. This sounds more than ok, but according to some sources these are relatively low production figures, at least if you compare it with the European HD DVD manufacturer Singulus, which claims to produce 20 000 discs per line and day. In other terms, almost triple the capacity of Sony’s. Singulus also manufactures Blu-ray media, but has not relased any figures regarding this.
Sony DADC is the only Blu-ray media printer in the USA and is therefore expected to handle all of the movie studios productions. They have plans for drastically increasing its production capacity to almost 5 million discs a month before October. Then six lines of production will be running capable of 50GB dual layer media. It’s still uncertain when the first movies will be launched on dual layer discs, which will mean that Blu-ray, to begin with, will offer lower capacity than HD DVD. HD DVD has already started using its dual layer discs at 30GB, a single layer BD-media can store up to 25GB.
