Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruined
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.
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Yes, but blu-ray doesn't really have to be concerned with the .60 lens, because like you said, it's a dime a dozen. The real issue for Sony is to get the .85 lens on an economy of scale. But with 5 million bd players out there, already, how far off is it from achieving that? Especially if they can get China to manufacture the lens. Throwing a 20 million part order at China brings the unit cost down on the lens, which can make the bd players cheaper. You can argue that replication is also cheaper, but the same issue will arise when more replication centers open and prices fall on the cost of replication.
By your estimation, the only thing that should be costing Toshiba any real money is the blue laser, and that now is cheaper. Why haven't Toshiba players dropped even further in price?