Quote:
Originally Posted by ganthc
I know this was true at the start of the war, but does it still hold true now? Hasn't the prices for the parts fallen largely because of the use of bd drives in the ps3?
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The price of blue lasers has fallen dramatically but the manufacturing cost of the lens remains a hurdle - Blu-Ray needs
both a 0.60 NA lens and also a 0.85 NA lens in order to focus the laser properly for DVD and Blu-Ray playback respectively; another option is a "floating" lens, but that too is costly. The 0.85 NA lens needs to be very precisely made out of high quality materials in order for BD to work properly due to the density of the data in BD; this cost is compounded by the fact that only BD players use this type of lens.
Meanwhile, HD DVD uses a single 0.60 NA lens for both DVD and HD DVD. It can use the same mass-marketed plastic lens that $50 Walmart DVD players use.
The issue of lens cost will continue to be a thorn in the side of BD when it comes to competing with HD DVD in price. They both use the same laser, so there is no advantage to either there - but Blu-Ray will always need to use two lenses or a more expensive "floating lens" in order to maintain CD/DVD backwards compatibility in the player - resulting in it being more costly than HD DVD for some time to come.
This is simple cost analysis, and a big reason why the HD DVD camp feels they will be able to undercut BD's prices for a long time to come. Toshiba specifically designed HD DVD so that it would take advantage of the current DVD infrastructure - Standard DVD replication lines can make HD DVD, HD DVD uses the same lens as standard DVD, and HD DVD uses the same laser as PS3. Therefore HD DVD has "economy of scale" on all levels from all player parts to actual disc replication. They have a reference design and are basically set for the mass-market; we will see how BDA can respond to the beginnings of this coming in Q4, as they have a long way to go to build up something to compete with the existing infrastructure HD DVD can use for their hardware and software.