I’m Not Dead Yet

Like many before, a recent article in Slate discusses the oft-proclaimed death of the compact disc.

Yes, CD sales have been declining for years. Yes, it is almost certainly due to downloading and other delivery methods. Yes, there were hundreds of millions of discs worth $10 billion sold in 2005.

The article primarily deals with music CDs, but we have seen a similar trend with our business-to-business customers. In the same way sales of discs from chart-topping artists have declined due to downloading and music-sharing, we have seen a decline in the use of CDs by some of our largest clients. These are the companies that have the money and the infrastructure to support digital delivery.

While just putting a file up on a website and having people download it seems easy and free, if you want more than a handful of people to view it, you need an entirely different back end network to support that. There are many companies that make a very nice living proving hosting and bandwidth for streaming media. Serving media files to hundreds of viewers is very different from serving HTML files to a few dozen people.

When it comes to the smaller, independent artist, we have noticed the same thing described in the article happening to the small business customer. Smaller companies that cannot support moving to digital delivery for any of a number of reasons, continue to expand their use of CDs and other optical media.

CDs are still a great way to deliver your message. When you send someone a CD, you can be nearly 100% certain they will be able to view it or listen to it. They can use it in a variety of machines, and when they are done with it, they can give it to others.

For the smaller artist or company a CD provides a lot of advantages and can help increase the perceived value of your product. The illegal downloading of music and other digital content has helped to devalue all forms of digital content. Many people do not consider illegal music downloads theft simply because no physical item was taken. This contributes to the perception that digital music, movies and software have no real value. But a CD or a DVD, those are real physical items that have real value.

Sometime in the future digital delivery methods probably will kill the CD, but for now, the rumors of the CDs demise have been greatly exaggerated.

What is High Definition?

In the strictest sense of the term, an image is considered high definition (HD) if it has a minimum vertical resolution of either 720p or 1080i and a 16:9 aspect ratio. That’s it. If your display can meet those two requirements, it is technically an HD display.

That’s not really much of a hurdle now a days is it? So the problem now is that we have a whole bunch of relatively crappy images and displays all claiming to be “high def” and just confusing the average consumer.

I have seen HD material that runs the gamut from true HD material shot, edited and broadcast in full 1080p; to 480i standard definition source material that is upconverted and stretched and looks worse than a good quality VHS. Both of the resulting images are technically HD, but even the most untrained viewer can easily tell the difference.

Broadcasters and content providers need to be more judicious in their use of the term “HD.” As far as I’m concerned, material that was ever any form of standard definition should not be called HD just because it was upconverted and scaled to meet the HD spec. Material should be called HD only if it was acquired in HD and stays HD through the entire production and delivery process.

Flash Memory

Will flash memory ever replace optical discs or hard drive storage?

I don’t think so. All three should be able to happily co-exist for a long time. Each media type has significant advantages over the others.

While flash memory is small, fast and getting cheaper all the time, it is still extremely expensive on a per unit basis compared to optical discs and hard drives.

Today, you can buy a 2 Gig USB drive or flash memory card for around $50. You can buy a 250 Gig hard drive for less than $100. That’s more than 100 times the storage for less than twice the price. Optical media is relatively cheap also. 4 Gigs of flash memory will cost you at least $100. A 4.7 Gig DVD-R can be had for much less than $1.

Prices of flash memory are dropping all the time, but so are hard drive prices; and capacities of both are increasing just as quickly.
Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of each type:

Flash Memory:
Pro – Small, super fast access times, usable in a wide variety of devices, doesn’t require constant power, capacity increasing and price decreasing all the time.
Con – Very expensive per unit of storage.

Hard Drive:
Pro – Enormous capacities, fast sequential access times, extremely low cost per unit of storage, price decreasing all the time.
Con – Susceptible to magnetic effects, relatively slow random access times, small drive failures can render all data unreadable.

Optical Media:
Pro – Impervious to magnetic effects, cannot be overwritten so useful for archiving, reported lifespan up to 100 years (under good storage conditions), failure of one part of the disc may not affect other parts, usable in a wide variety of devices, low cost per unit of storage.
Con – Relatively fixed capacity, media decays very quickly under poor storage conditions, cannot be reused, painfully slow random access times.

As you can see, each type of media has benefits the others can’t match. In the future, as they do now, each type will have its place. Flash memory will be used for situations where quick access times and portability are paramount. Hard disks will be used where capacity is the primary concern. Optical media will be used for long term archiving and media distribution.

Will movies and other media ever be distributed on flash memory? I don’t think so. Optical media will always be cheaper for that purpose. The only method for wide scale distribution that is cheaper than optical media is digital distribution. That has its own problems, which is a subject for another post.

Less Competition Can Be Good

There is an article by James Surowiecki about the Sirius/XM satellite radio merger in the current issue of The New Yorker.

He points out how reducing competition is usually bad for consumers, but in this case,

“Many consumers have hesitated to subscribe to satellite because they didn’t know which company would survive. And desirable content is split between the companies: if you want major-league baseball and Bob Edwards, you need XM, but if you want N.F.L. games and Howard Stern, you need Sirius. Allowing Sirius and XM to merge would eliminate this problem in one stroke.”

This sounds suspiciously like the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD issue we are all facing. Consumers are holding back because there is no clear winner in this battle, and for the average viewer neither format offers significant improvements over a good quality standard definition DVD.

If the Sirius/XM merger is approved and satellite radio booms because of it, the HD disc camps should think long and hard about what they can both gain by putting aside their differences.

Both camps missed their chance at a merger a few years ago. As more and more titles trickle into the field and penetration slowly builds, it will be harder and harder to find any middle ground. In fact, we may very well be past that point already.

There is so much money and pride involved that at this stage our best result is probably going to be dual-format players and/or dual-format discs.

Offset Printing Now Available for Discs

Action Duplication has purchased a new Lamin 6-Color Offset Press for printing on DVD and CD discs. We are now the only DVD and CD replicator capable of decorating optical discs with Offset, Silk Screen, or On-Disc-Digital Printing.

Each process has its advantages. Offset is best for extremely high quality 4-color process printing which closely matches printed packaging. Silk screen is best for printing with Pantone inks in up to 5 colors. On-Disc-Digital Printing offers high quality and is economical for 4-color process runs of under 2,000 discs, and with runs using its variable print capability.

Our new equipment prints 4-color process images on optical discs with the same high resolution quality expected on offset printed paper. It can print 85,000 discs per day. The resolution is breathtaking. The quality of the Offset printing far exceeds so called “Award Winning” Silk Screen printing. The press prints in CMYK plus 2 additional colors for adding a Pantone color and the white flood.

The print quality of offset sets the standard for optical disc decoration. It is now the preferred process for printing on new theatrical DVD releases. Because this state of the art press is quick to set up and uses economical consumables, we will be able pass on cost savings to our clients.

Learn more about offset and all of the print options we offer.

Action Duplication Expands DVD and CD On-disc Print Capabilites

Action Duplication Expands DVD and CD On-disc Print Capabilites

Only DVD And CD Replicator With Three Printing Options

West Conshohocken, PA (March 13, 2007) – Action Duplication, the region’s premier replicator of DVDs and CDs, today announced the purchase of a new Lamin 6-Color Offset Press for printing directly on DVD and CD discs. The new equipment prints 4-color process images on optical discs with the same high resolution quality expected on offset printed paper.

The offset printer can print 85,000 discs per day. The resolution is 175 lines per inch. The press prints in CMYK plus 2 additional colors for adding a Pantone color and the white flood.

Action Duplication is now the only DVD and CD replicator capable of decorating optical discs with offset, silk screen, or on-disc digital printing. Each process has its advantages. Offset is best for extremely high quality 4-color process printing which closely matches printed packaging. Silk screen is best for printing with Pantone inks in up to 5 colors. On-disc digital printing offers high quality and is economical for 4-color process runs of less than 2,000 discs, and with runs using its variable print capability.

“The print quality of the new press sets the standard for optical disc decoration,” said Joel Levitt, president of Action Duplication. “Offset is now the preferred process for printing on new theatrical DVD releases. Because this state of the art press is quick to set up and uses economical consumables, we can pass the cost savings on to our clients.”

About Action Duplication

Action Duplication is the only manufacturer of DVDs and CDs in the Philadelphia region to offer one-stop shopping for video, audio and disc manufacturing, packaging, printing, fulfillment, DVD authoring, broadcast duplication, and international standards conversions. Action Duplication works with a wide variety of industries including pharmaceuticals, printers, video production facilities, independent producers, advertising agencies, trade associations, universities, and government agencies. Manufacturing is completed on site in Action Duplication’s state-of-the-art production facility, assuring the highest quality standards.

With headquarters and a manufacturing plant in West Conshohocken, PA, Action Duplication has offices in Harrisburg, PA and Ijamsville, MD, serving the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area. For more information on Action Duplication, please visit www.actionduplication.com or call 610-828-7580.