DailyTech - Sony Develops Smaller, Cheaper Blu-ray Disc Laser Unit

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Hardware Sony Develops Smaller, Cheaper Blu-ray Disc Laser Unit
Marcus Yam (Blog) - January 26, 2008 8:10 AM

53 comment(s) - last by Fnoob.. on Jan 31 at 11:11 AM

The new, improved laser unit (Source: Sony Corp.)

New 3mm laser helps pave way for more compact, 9.5mm

In the spirit of continuous improvement, Sony Corporation announced on Thursday a new design of the blue-violet laser unit that measures just 3mm thick. The laser unit is a crucial component of Blu-ray Disc drives and players.

Developed in part with Nichia Corporation, the new blue-violet laser is now small enough for practical integration of Blu-ray Disc playback and record functions into mobile applications, such as laptop computers and in-car entertainment systems. Sony said that its less-than 3mm thick laser unit will enable Blu-ray Disc drives measuring in 9.5mm thickness.

Besides improvement in packaging, the new laser unit also features more stable reading of dual-layer media and new reading capabilities, such as the ability to read organic media.

The shrink to a 3mm design also cuts down cost – a critical point in Blu-ray Disc hardware. Last year, Blu-ray Disc movie players hit sub-$300 levels. Analysts now believe that it costs Sony around $400 to manufacture each PlayStation 3, thanks in part to the falling costs of Blu-ray Disc drive hardware.

With the falling price of Blu-ray Disc assemblies and processor die-shrinks to 65nm, SCEI chief Kazuo Hirai expects the PlayStation division to be profitable starting next fiscal year.

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Prie drop?!

By daftrok on 1/26/2008 1:11:52 PM , Rating: 1

What with the rumors of the 80GB PS3 going away, this new cheaper technology for Blu ray and the further development of 45nm chipset for Cell processor, I feel a $299 price point coming in at around the end of this year depending on sales. Imagine that, the PS3 50 bucks away from the Wii...

RE: Prie drop?!

By GaryJohnson on 1/26/2008 1:22:49 PM , Rating: 2

Unless the Wii also gets a price drop.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By daftrok on 1/26/2008 1:53:11 PM , Rating: 5

Doubtful. They can barely reach demand as it is; a price drop wouldn't make any sense.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By GaryJohnson on 1/26/2008 2:26:30 PM , Rating: 1

Demand will be lower and supply will be higher by the end of the year.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By zinfamous on 1/27/2008 2:51:04 AM , Rating: 4

oh yeah. I remember that prediction by the end of 2007...

an entire new sector of consumers is interested in the Wii than was predicted: senior citizens, women, non-geeks, etc.

supply? perhaps... demand? doubtful.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By VahnTitrio on 1/28/2008 10:37:48 AM , Rating: 2

That's just it though, Wii is most appealing to traditional non-gamers. Nintendo needs to make a profit off each unit as this group will not be purchasing large libraries of games like some gamers. The price will stay up as long as sales are high. The games themselves frankly are too simple and short for me. The 360 sees far more gameplay than the Wii in my house.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By blckgrffn on 1/29/2008 11:50:10 AM , Rating: 1

Have you seen the Wii attach rate? It's freaking nuts, something like 8 games...

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RE: Prie drop?!

By GaryJohnson on 1/29/2008 12:37:14 PM , Rating: 2

Last I heard was 5 for Wii & PS3 and 8.8 for XBox 360.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st...

Having been looking for a new Wii game lately, looking at the shelves it looks like Wii has taken over the 'budget title' market that once belonged to the PS2.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By clovell on 1/29/2008 1:49:59 PM , Rating: 3

I've had the same experience - my 360 seeing far more gameplay than the Wii. But, this past Friday I picked up No More Heroes for the Wii, and it's changing my mind a bit.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By Hulk on 1/26/2008 3:52:29 PM , Rating: 3

Unless they want to guarantee market penetration. Remember MS-DOS?

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RE: Prie drop?!

By Noya on 1/26/2008 7:16:24 PM , Rating: 5

Here is what I don't understand:

How can they be barely reaching demand since:

a. It's been out for how long now? going on 2 years?

b. It uses no exotic/rare parts (Blu-Ray drive, cell/multi-core processor, etc.)

To me, is seems they're artificially slowing production to keep demand high.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By Oregonian2 on 1/28/2008 3:24:19 PM , Rating: 2

It's not like they're making only a few of them. Think if one month's production were sitting in front of you. :-)

It's more a matter of not expanding to yet another production line rather than slowing production (and they have expanded quite a bit since starting up). The lines making them are making a *LOT*. Starting up yet another line costs a good bit and has to be traded off with the possibility that demand will tail off before that new line has paid for it's own startup. And because it's been out for quite a while, the possibility of that probably increases.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By Noya on 1/26/08, Rating: 0

RE: Prie drop?!

By erikejw on 1/26/2008 8:01:43 PM , Rating: 4

They earn money on every unit sold to slow production would be a huge loss for them.

Orders is placed 9 months or whatever before they are delivered.

Noone not even themselves thought they would blast XBOX360 and PS3 away like they have done probably selling 3-5x what they originally thought.

USA is probably the last market that gets its demand filled as with the 8800GT due to the lower prices and less profitability. If you have 1M units you know you can sell you'd like to earn 80$ and not 40$ a piece.

Chistmas season is the hardest time to get hold of hard to get products.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By Aloonatic on 1/27/2008 1:49:07 PM , Rating: 4

I must admit, I have had the same dark thoughts about Nintendo's pricing strategy, but it just doesn't make a great deal of sense.

When I've wanted one there haven't been any in stock but temptation soon passes, usually after I play wii sports on my girlfriend's wii and realise that I probably wouldn't play on it much anyway.

I just think that they haven't really had a great deal of faith in their own products since perhaps the SNES days (the N64 and Game Cube hardly set games world alight) so they probably didn't expect a great deal from the Wii.

Therefore, they were either not in a position to, or were unwilling to, gamble expensive resources in order to supply large quantities of the console to the world market.

I'm sure if they had known how well the wii would have been adopted by every man and their granny they would have made far more than they are now.

The question is, do they scale up production or do they just leave it as is and concentrate their efforts on the next machine? It looks like they've gone for the latter.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By dflynchimp on 1/28/2008 10:29:38 AM , Rating: 5

"I play wii sports on my girlfriend's wii and realise that I probably wouldn't play on it much anyway."

maybe because you have a girlfriend? ;)

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RE: Prie drop?!

By Screwballl on 1/29/2008 12:16:32 PM , Rating: 2

agreed, wait until you're married and after a year or two of marriage, you will want to play games as much as possible to keep out of her hair...

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RE: Prie drop?!

By Christopher1 on 1/27/08, Rating: 0

RE: Prie drop?!

By HrilL on 1/26/2008 1:57:35 PM , Rating: 2

the price of the Wii has not effect on the price of the PS 3 from what I can tell.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By mles1551 on 1/26/2008 4:20:31 PM , Rating: 2

The Wii has no effect on the Playstation. They cater to entirely different audiences.

Just b/c Chevy drops the price of the Silverado does not mean Ford has to drop the price of the Focus. Sure they're both vehicles, but they are not bought by the same people.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By Omega215D on 1/27/2008 12:40:03 AM , Rating: 1

Bad analogy there. If Chevy lowers the price of a Silverado then Ford will find a way to also lower the cost of the F150. Both are competing for the pick-up market so they'll do anything to undercut each other.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By mikeyD95125 on 1/27/2008 5:07:08 PM , Rating: 3

It is not a bad analogy.

He said that comparing the prices of the PS3 and Wii is like comparing the prices of a truck and a mid-size car. The the target audience of each vehicle is totally different so that the price for each vehicle is irrelivent to the other.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By Jimmybones on 1/26/2008 1:57:56 PM , Rating: 2

That is an interesting idea but IMHO I would say no.

Nintendo has had too much of an issue already supplying the market with enough units to meet demand. A price drop would only further this issue.

The second point we would have to wonder is if at $199 Nintendo would still be making a profit. They don't like to sell anything for a loss and while they have probably chopped about $50 of production costs in a year it is hard to say.

Anyhow bring on the cheap consoles, maybe this will prod MS to bring back the Elite unit or a new elite with integrated Wi-Fi :-) Yeah, I'm reaching there.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By dome1234 on 1/26/2008 2:06:47 PM , Rating: 3

it's nice to want things....

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RE: Prie drop?!

By Alexstarfire on 1/26/2008 3:17:10 PM , Rating: 2

That'd be great, and Sony may end up doing that since they can't sell enough as it is, but I still wouldn't get one. Dropping BC was a bad idea, because there are people like me that never purchased a PS2. I'm sure as hell not going to buy a PS2 as well as the PS3. If they end up adding it later, then I'll look into it, and probably buy one if I have the money.

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RE: Prie drop?!

By thilanliyan on 1/27/2008 1:22:34 PM , Rating: 2

Do you already have PS2 games that you bought...while not having a PS2?? Or are there tons of games on PS2 that you DO want to play (such as??)?

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RE: Prie drop?!

By Rockjock51 on 1/27/2008 1:41:08 PM , Rating: 2

Why have 2 consoles plugged in, taking up space and using up TV inputs when 1 should do the job?

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RE: Prie drop?!

By wallijonn on 1/29/2008 11:40:19 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Why have 2 consoles plugged in, taking up space and using up TV inputs when 1 should do the job?

Because both units will now last twice as long.

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So much for the theory...

By BansheeX on 1/26/2008 5:18:49 PM , Rating: 5

that blu-ray prices won't drop because Sony is evil and only wants to steal your money, rape your dog, and take over the world with memory stick.

RE: So much for the theory...

By sweetsauce on 1/26/08, Rating: 0

RE: So much for the theory...

By chick0n on 1/27/08, Rating: -1

RE: So much for the theory...

By omnicronx on 1/27/08, Rating: 0

RE: So much for the theory...

By feraltoad on 1/27/2008 1:53:51 AM , Rating: 3

Not necessarily in that order.

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RE: So much for the theory...

By mindless1 on 1/27/2008 8:26:57 AM , Rating: 1

Do you always make up nonsense? There was no widespread theory that Blu-Ray prices won't drop, everyone knew they would eventually, just not as fast nor as far as HD DVD prices for a long time.

Wanna bastard puppy?

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RE: So much for the theory...

By BansheeX on 1/27/2008 8:10:35 PM , Rating: 3

Uhhh, where have you been?! This has been going on ever since the Warner announcement. You have no idea how many times I've heard it already from HD-DVD fans on DT: "Now they'll have no reason to lower prices with the absence of HD-DVD. This is going to be horrible for the consumer. This is all Sony's fault, blah blah blah." To which most rational people have cited DVD which had no competing format, but still had player manufacturers and studios competing for your dollar, improving yields, and dropping prices while remaining profitable. Toshiba, being the only HD-DVD player manufacturer, circumvented all of that and decided to practically give it away, which is precisely the reason the rest of the industry hasn't joined them! Businesses think products should make money, not lose it. Imagine that. But HD-DVD fans short-sightedly see super-low prices as good for them rather than bad in that the strategy has alienated their format from getting more industry support.

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RE: So much for the theory...

By SavagePotato on 1/27/2008 9:28:27 PM , Rating: 2

That's conservative.

Some of the dud backer extremists have gone as far to predict that Sony, aka the great Satan, would mandate a raise in player prices to close to $1000 again.

There are whole articles littered with doomsday replies about how prices won't drop for years, because of Sony alone and their heinous intent.

Lets do some paraphrasing..

"Sony will keep prices high now for as long as they can."

"You will likely see player prices shoot up to $1000 now."

"There is no way blu ray players will be below $200 for at least two years minimum"

"If the price of blu ray players drops below $200 before the end of the year I will buy a ps3 and donate it to charity"

No none of that happened, the dailytech hd-dvd fans are after all level headed and sensible individuals that never make rash predictions. Right..

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RE: So much for the theory...

By Spuke on 1/28/2008 11:59:30 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Some of the dud backer extremists have gone as far to predict that Sony

And you're somehow NOT an extremist?

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RE: So much for the theory...

By SavagePotato on 1/28/2008 2:31:14 PM , Rating: 2

What you may or may not think of me has nothing to do with what the validity of the kind of outrageous claims hd-dvd fans are making daily.

If anything I am a realist, just like everyone else that can see hd-dvd is hd-ded.

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RE: So much for the theory...

By SavagePotato on 1/27/2008 11:30:05 AM , Rating: 1

Yesterday my Ps3 raped my cat, it was horrible. Then it went on a rampage infecting everything in the house with drm, while shooting blu ray discs out of it's drive at people on the street. Just like in that Dolph Lundgren movie with the deadly cd's of doom.

Now I have to punch in a secret code to turn my microwave on. I got it wrong and a zombified Ken Kutargi showed up at my door yelling something about how I should have worked extra hours.

Luckily a team of Toshiba ninjas basked in beams of white light showed up and kicked Kens ass, provided counseling for my cat and handed out free candy to all the children in town.

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Cheaper first, smaller second.

By djc208 on 1/26/08, Rating: 0

RE: Cheaper first, smaller second.

By chick0n on 1/27/08, Rating: 0

RE: Cheaper first, smaller second.

By tjr508 on 1/27/2008 12:10:10 PM , Rating: 2

So you are saying Sony has a good history of providing support?

That's funny how they stopped supporting my DVD burner in one year even when there was a fatal flaw that was easily fixed with the right firmware flash that sony never wrote. I had to rely on some dude in his mom's basement to write the update for the drive because Sony never did even when hundreds of faulty drives out there only needed a simple flash.

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RE: Cheaper first, smaller second.

By djc208 on 1/28/2008 10:44:09 AM , Rating: 3

But as discussed in other articles a PS3 does not integrate into a home theater system well. I can't set up my universal remote to control it, it doesn't sit well with the rest of my equipment, it needs a lot more power, and I don't need or want any of the extra features offered.

I could upgrade my HTPC to do it too and get a LG combo drive but I'd need to upgrade my hardware to decode H.264 reliably, and eventually move to Vista once they turn on the HDCP on the disks too.

Easier to get a stand-alone player that's small, cheap, low power, works, and is easily integrated into my home theater.

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opener a turn off

By phusg on 1/29/2008 11:17:43 AM , Rating: 1

Marcus,
Just to let you know: IMHO starting your article with, "In the spirit of continuous improvement" makes you sound more like a Sony fanboy than a journalist to me and turns me off to the rest of what you have to say.
Regards,
Pete

RE: opener a turn off

By TerranMagistrate on 1/29/2008 12:03:20 PM , Rating: 2

Will you people quit whining about Marcus's articles already?

As of late, Sony has actually been improving in regards to how '06-'07 went for them overall.

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PS3 price

By wallijonn on 1/29/2008 11:52:36 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
With the falling price of Blu-ray Disc assemblies and processor die-shrinks to 65nm, SCEI chief Kazuo Hirai expects the PlayStation division to be profitable starting next fiscal year.

There probably won't be an immediate price cut below $400 because they have to make up the profits lost since inception. Since software sales subsidise hardware costs, if the software doesn't sell then it will take longer to recoup loses. BD movie buyers are already used to buying their movies on BOGOs, so paying the retail price of movies may not appeal to many, thereby also undercutting software subsidisation (which have to be Sony films only (Sony Pictures, Columbia, Tri-star, MGM, Screen Gems, Seven Arts, United Artists, Mandalay, etc.)).

Blue Ray standard?

By Fnoob on 1/31/2008 11:11:51 AM , Rating: 2

I was a hair away from buying an internal BR superdupermultidrive for my PC last week, when suddenly a fiscally responsible voice inside pointed out that I really don't need one. I am also concerned about rumours of a BR 2.0 or 2.1 or whatever, coming out as soon as I buy one. Anyone know if the current drives are going to stay current for more than a week or two?

Blu ray is best!

By Serafina on 1/26/08, Rating: -1

RE: Blu ray is best!

By Ripvanwinkle on 1/26/2008 2:19:22 PM , Rating: 5

Stop wasting my pixels,child!

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RE: Blu ray is best!

By omnicronx on 1/26/2008 2:19:48 PM , Rating: 5

quote:
HD-DVD sucks. That's why Blu ray is winning, Blu ray is next gen, HD-DVD is last gen.

You should really stop letting your children use your DT account.

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RE: Blu ray is best!

By feraltoad on 1/27/2008 9:57:08 PM , Rating: 2

I think a character from an 80's movie snuck out of a Blu-Ray title, in all probability Biff from Back to the Future. "HD-DVD is last gen, McFLY!"

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RE: Blu ray is best!

By xsilver on 1/26/2008 2:38:04 PM , Rating: 3

Blu-ray is last gen

next gen is X-ray because X comes after B ...

Some claim a Z ray can be invented but they were later proved to be smoking crack.

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RE: Blu ray is best!

By omnicronx on 1/26/2008 2:52:18 PM , Rating: 5

quote:
but they were later proved to be smoking crack.

and apparently they were not the only ones ahah

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"So, I think the same thing of the music industry. They can't say that they're losing money, you know what I'm saying. They just probably don't have the same surplus that they had." -- Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA