"Sony has developed equipment to streamline the disc mastering process by reducing the eleven steps currently used in DVD mastering to five for BD-ROM. This mastering process, Phase Transition Mastering (PTM), requires as little as one-fifth of the space required for DVD mastering and the equipment can be configured to allow mastering of both BD-ROM and DVD-ROM on a single system. The first two commercial machines are for Technicolor and Cinram for Q2, 2005 installation.

With these developments in the industry, replication facilities in the United States are setting up and preparing to mass produce BD-ROM Discs. Technicolor is establishing a complete pilot BD disc manufacturing process by July 2005. Cinram already has a pilot replication line that produced demo discs for CES 2005 and is awaiting the delivery of commercial lines.

“Fox is pleased to see the increasing number of technology companies and materials vendors committing to Blu-ray implementation, which is reducing costs to promising levels through technological breakthroughs and innovation,” said Danny Kaye, SVP Technology and Research Strategy at Twentieth Century Fox. “We look forward to continued technological progress along with developments in content protection.”

In addition to ramping up for mass production of the 50GB discs that will be available at format launch, Blu-ray has begun work to ensure that the format continues to grow as high-definition technology evolves. Blu-ray companies have successfully demonstrated 200GB discs in a laboratory environment and are poised to further expand the format’s capacity as needs dictate.'"