Blu-ray Disc Association, TDK is the first to market with bare Blu-ray Disc media. Retail pricing is set at $19.99 for a 25GB BD-R (recordable), $24.99 for a 25GB BD-RE (rewritable). In addition, TDK will ship 50GB Blu-ray Disc media later this year with retail pricing set at $47.99 for a 50GB BD-R (recordable) and $59.99 for a 50GB BD-RE (rewritable).

The revolutionary single-sided discs are bare, cartridge-free media. The 25GB products are single layer whereas the 50GB products have a dual layer recording material structure. TDK first shipped mass production samples in December 2005, and with the subsequent issuance of the relevant license, the company immediately commenced full force manufacturing.

"TDK is pleased to be the first to market with bare Blu-ray Disc media, which can be counted among the most significant product introductions in the company's distinguished 70 year history," noted Bruce Youmans, TDK Vice President of Marketing. "TDK has been involved in the development of blue laser recording technology since 1998, and TDK innovations such as hard coating and our inorganic dye formulation have played an essential role in making this revolutionary new format a reality. From backing up today's large capacity hard drives and servers to authoring and recording high definition video and sharing high resolution digital image collections, TDK Blu-ray Discs set new standards in recording and playback by offering unprecedented capacities, fast transfer rates and revolutionary durability."

Making Blu-ray Discs a Reality

TDK Blu-ray Discs are manufactured to the highest quality standards at the company's Chikumagawa Techno Factory in Japan. Outfitted with state of the art technology, the Chikumagawa factory is poised to lead the charge on optical media development well into the future. TDK heavily committed its worldwide engineering resources to Blu-ray, and has created new formulations and manufacturing techniques that constitute revolutionary milestones in recording technology.

The high-sensitivity inorganic recording material utilized by TDK for the write-once type BD-R is completely different than the recording materials used for CD or DVD. TDK Blu-ray Discs' inorganic material is impervious to light, making the discs exceptionally well suited for archiving data. Composed of copper and silicon, TDK's exclusive CuSi recording material delivers remarkable, long-lasting performance. The recording material enables fast recording and playback speeds and also makes it possible to realize massive capacities through multi-layering. For TDK's rewritable BD-RE Blu-ray Disc media, a specially designed high-sensitivity phase change recording material is utilized. The material is so stable that a TDK Blu-ray Disc shows virtually no performance degradation even after it has been overwritten 10,000 times. The 25GB and 50GB BD-R and BD-RE discs offer 2x (72Mbps) rated recording speed. Based on simulated acceleration tests, TDK's archival life expectancy rating for Blu-ray Disc media is more than 50 years.

Blu-ray Discs were originally released in Japan in April of 2003 with a protective cartridge. The cartridge was necessary in order to protect the recording material, which is manufactured close to the Blu-ray Disc's surface in order to realize the disc's high density recording capabilities. TDK pioneered hard coating technology, eliminating the need for cumbersome cartridges. Every TDK Blu-ray Disc includes DURABIS, the world's most advanced and most protective hard coating formulation. DURABIS increases the scratch resistance of Blu-ray Disc media by a factor of 100, as demonstrated in rigorous testing. DURABIS also resists fingerprints to help eliminate errors caused by disc surface smudges. Because the DURABIS coating technology rapidly discharges static electricity, the discs also resist the accumulation of dust, a potential source of recording and playback errors. TDK Blu-ray Discs provide absolute reliability for perfect recording and playback every time.

A 0.1 millimeter thick cover layer comprises the Blu-ray Disc's outermost internal surface, and the recording material resides beneath it. During recording, the laser passes through the cover layer in its path to the recording layer. Absolute uniformity in the thickness of the cover layer is critical to ensuring precise laser tracking, which is required for reliable performance. To achieve total uniformity in the cover layer's thickness, TDK developed an exclusive Spin Coating manufacturing process. With TDK Spin Coating, the cover layer is spun onto the disc at a high rate of speed, ensuring even dispersal of the material. High precision stacking technology further ensures reliability by consistently overlaying disc layers with the utmost precision.

TDK's Blu-ray Disc roadmap extends the format's capabilities even further, proving that Blu-ray is truly future-ready. TDK technologies have already enabled creating 100GB, quad-layer Blu-ray Disc prototypes and blazing 216Mbps (6x) speed. The company is in the process of developing the world's first 200GB Blu-ray Disc prototype.

TDK Blu-ray Disc Media: Unparalleled Storage Capacity for Professional Applications

In business and commercial environments where a high volume of discs are recorded, reliable media is of the utmost importance. That is why TDK is offering its line of recordable 25GB Blu-ray Disc media in 50-piece spindle packaging that delivers unparalleled reliability to business and commercial customers who require bulk configurations. TDK's Blu-ray Disc media not only meets the needs of replicators and high volume business users, it also offers unprecedented durability for authoring and library applications.

TDK 25GB Blu-ray Disc media will be available in 50-piece spindles in the second quarter 2006.

Specifications

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 Item                    Unit   BD-R25    BD-R50    BD-RE25   BD-RE50

----------------------- ----- ---------- -------- ---------- --------

 Type                      -       Write-once          Rewritable

----------------------- ----- ------------------- -------------------

 Recording capacity            25           50        25        50

                          GB  (single-    (dual-   (single-   (dual-

                               layer)     layer)    layer)    layer)

----------------------- ----- ---------- -------- ---------- --------

 Recording wavelength     nm          405 (blue-violet laser)

----------------------- ----- ---------------------------------------

 Disc diameter            mm                                     120

----------------------- ----- ---------------------------------------

 Disc thickness           mm                                     1.2

----------------------- ----- ---------------------------------------

 Cover layer thickness    mm                                     0.1

----------------------- ----- ---------------------------------------

 Track pitch              um           0.32 (group recording)

----------------------- ----- ---------------------------------------

 Data transfer rate      Mbps               361X / 722X)

----------------------- ----- ---------------------------------------

 Reflectance                   12tilde24  4tilde8  12tilde24  4tilde8

----------------------- ----- ---------- -------- ---------- --------

 Linear velocity         m/s               4.91X / 9.82X

----------------------- ----- ---------------------------------------

About TDK

TDK Corporation (NYSE: TDK - News) is a leading global electronics company based in Japan. It was established in 1935 to commercialize "ferrite," a key material in electronics and magnetics. The company today is a leader in the development of next-generation technologies such as Blu-ray Disc recording media, an optical disc ideally suited for high-definition video recording. TDK offers a full line of recordable DVD and CD media, digital camcorder tapes, professional data storage solutions including LTO Ultrium media, and much more.