RiData, the Taiwanese disc-maker, announced on Tuesday that the company plans to mass produce Blu-Ray Disc Rewritable (BD-RW) discs and high-definition DVD rewritable (HD DVD-RW) discs.  This is an important step in lowering cost for consumers, says InfoWorld.

The initial cost of the Blu-Ray rewritables will still be a little high, says Ritek, RiData's parent company.  According to Ritek representative, Eric Ai, the average cost per disc will stay around $10 per disc in retail stores, even though production costs for the disks cost around $5 per disc.  Also, Ai states that prices on Blu-Ray and HD optical disks will not likely come down until other manufacturers in Taiwan start production on the disks to increase volume.

The single-layer BD-RW disc has a capacity of 25GB, which can hold three hours of terrestrial digital high-definition video.  The HD DVD-RW can hold 20GB.

The optical disk market is dominated by Taiwanese manufacturers, with companies such as Ritek and CMC Magnetics.  As a step for reduced cost of these discs and increased revenue, these companies obtain licenses for the disks and produce as much as they can.

RiData was one of the first optical media manufacturers to bring HD DVD-R media to the United States market.  The company also dabbles in OLED production, which they mainly use in cell phones, mp3 players, and automobiles.

Production on the HD DVD-RW and BD-RW will begin in the third quarter of this year.