Good news for Blu-Ray and HD DVD users

According to InfoWorld, Ritek, a Taiwanese disc manufacturer has started production of Blu-ray re-writable discs (BD-RE) as well as HD DVD-RE discs. A small step for disc manufacturing may be, but an important one for the end user - you and me - this dual format production will eventually force down the price of these suckers.

At the moment you’re looking at around US$10 per disc, not a small amount to extract from anyone’s wallet and perhaps even harder to swallow when you’re told the production costs are only US$5. I’m obviously in the wrong business. However as other disc manufacturers start to produce both formats the US$10 price tag will fall.

How much can these suckers handle? Well, the BD-REs have a capacity of 25GB which equates to 3 hours of high-def TV, where as the HD DVD-REs hold 20GB.

As for recording devices, the Sony BWU100A is still an expensive addition to your PC at around the US$700 mark, but as with all tech gear this price will drop and one day the terms BD-RE and HD DVD-RE will be as common as DVD-RW.