TOKYO —

NEC Electronics Corp said Tuesday it will start sample shipments of system large-scale integrated circuit chips for use in Blu-ray Disc players in September. The new chip, EMMA 3PF, supports all the necessary functions for Blu-ray Disc players with a board size half that of conventional chips. The embedded multicore central processing unit will speed up system boot up and improve operability, the company said.

NEC Electronics plans to start production in August with a monthly output of one million units. The price will be set at 15,000 yen per unit. The company sees the global market for Blu-ray Disc recorders and players expanding fivefold over the next three years to 40 million units.

The market for Blu-ray Disc players will grow to 35 million units in 2011 from 6.5 million units in 2008, mostly in the United States and Europe, the company said.

JCN

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3 Comments

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  kokuryu at 07:44 AM JST - 16th July

  Nobody in the US is buying BluRay players, yet. The price is still way too high. On the other hand, about 30% of people that I know has an HD DVD player - including myself. I only know ONE person with anything that can play back a BluRay disc - and they have a PS3 for their kid, and are not buying any BluRay discs for viewing.

  If the price hold true and a stand-alone BluRay player can be purchased for $150 in the US, then it will start to gain some traction. But until the price drop below the magic $100 mark, it will be slow to gain acceptance - the prices for the discs are still 2x or more that of normal DVDs - so nobody wants them.

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  onlineparasite at 09:35 AM JST - 16th July

  kokuryu: It will probably eventually become mainstream. Mainly because there is no direct competitor in the short-run..

  In the US specifically, cable tv is probably more spread and mabye many people lost interest in buying a specific movie on a disc, put it in a player and watch it. It might be as well easier to simply record it (not that digital recorder are not common in Japan), but DVD (buying and rental is very popular in Japan).

  It is sort of a habit, example, buying music on phone is a Japan thing, and could be pretty hard to popularize abroad.

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  motytrah at 01:09 PM JST - 16th July

  Most people use the PS3 to playback Blu-Ray. Even hard core videophiles. The PS3 continues to add features with every firmware update. The fact that it's essentially a really really fast computer means the player is quite flexible and upgradeable.

  That being said the adoption rate of any HD format will be slow because most people are happy with DVD.

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