On April 20, 2005, the SINGULUS group and the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, Hsinchu, Taiwan) jointly organized a seminar to present the solutions that SINGULUS offers for the production of the 3rd Generation Optical Disc formats.
An impressive number of attendees (110) were welcomed at the seminar. Attendees did not only come from Taiwan, but even flew in from countries as far away as Singapore and Malaysia. The great interest for the seminar actually confirmed the need for technical information on the equipment developments for the 3rd generation formats, and in this respect the seminar was perfectly timed – SINGULUS had the “scoop� being the first supplier introducing the complete product range – both for HD DVD and for Blu-ray Disc – and mastering as well as replication.
The seminar was opened by Dr. Der-Rey Huang, Deputy General Director of ITRI, referring to the excitement of the new developments in this industry, and an introduction to the status of the 3rd generation format was given by Mr. Guido Dalessi (Exec. VP Marketing & Sales, SINGULUS MASTERING). A full day program was prepared with detailed technical presentations concerning mastering (Dr. Dick Verhaart, Manager Mastering Applications), replication (Mr. Stephan Hotz, Product Manager Blu-ray) and testing (Dr. Leonhard Schwab, CTO Dr. Schwab).
Mastering
For several years, ITRI has been a frontrunner in the development of new formats, using a SINGULUS’ 257 nm Deep UV Laser Beam Recorder (“DUV LBR�). During more than 5 years, these DUV LBRs are have been installed at the major format developers of the global optical disc industry, however, the LBR is still to be considered an “R&D Tool�. Still, the years of experience gained with this DUV LBR have leveraged SINGULUS’ technology leader’s position for developing the production systems for the new formats. In this light, Dr. Dick Verhaart unveiled the secrets of the new “266� LBR and showed its impressive results.
Replication
Mr. Stephan Hotz introduced the SINGULUS Solutions for HD DVD – the SPACELINE II HD and showed a short movie displaying the new SINGULUS replication line for the Blu-ray format.