FAQ

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To the laymen, replication and duplication probably mean the same. But to the people in the disc manufacturing industry, there is a subtle difference. Replication usually refers to the process of making CD, DVD or Blu-Ray Disc from a glass stamper (or mold). When melted polycarbonate is injected under high pressure onto the glass stamper, the bits of information are formed. A reflective layers is then coated on the disc so the laser beam inside the CD, DVD or Blu-Ray Disc player can see the data.

Duplication, on the other hand, refers to making CD, DVD or Blu-Ray’s by burning data onto recordable media. For that reason duplication is usually limited to short-run smaller or urgent jobs. For large volume production, replication is the most cost effective and the discs produced are of higher quality.

Replication can only be done under highly temperature and dust controlled environment. Duplication can be done in any normal environment such as in the office or at home. CD, DVD or Blu-Ray Replication (so called pressed discs) usually have artwork printed on the disc using silkscreen or offset printing process. For duplicated CD or DVD, you can either print inkjet on demand or pre-print a batch of recordable media using silkscreen or offset printing.

Dual layer discs have two layers containing data. The first layer is semi transparent which allows the laser to see through to the second layer and access its data. This means that a dual layer disc can hold almost twice as much data as a single layer disc. Dual layer discs are now widely used for particularly long films and can be recognized by their 2 serial numbers on one side.

Both Blu-Ray Discs & DVD’s both use a dual layer format.

A hybrid DVD is a term used to define DVD’s that offer more than 1 purpose. This could mean that the DVD is authored to run on both Mac and Windows platforms or it could mean that the DVD is authored in such a way that it will play video when used inside a DVD player but when used in a DVD drive of a PC might contain software applications and data files. It could even be that the DVD offers all of the above plus some other features.

The term “Hybrid” simply means that it’s more than your single purpose DVD. Hybrid DVD’s often contain a multitude of content that can be tricky to author.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by thirteen leading consumer electronics and pc companies (Dell, Hitachi, HP, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition television (HDTV). Blu-ray makes it possible to record over 2 hours of HDTV, or more than 13 hours of SDTV on a 25GB disc. There are also higher capacity discs (BD-50) that can hold up to 50GB of data.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. The benefit of using a blue laser is that it has a shorter wavelength (405 nanometer) than a red laser (650 nanometer), which means that it’s possible to focus the laser beam with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly on the disc and makes it possible to fit more data on the same size disc. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray Disc recorders can be made backwards compatible with current red-laser technologies and allow playback of CDs and DVD’s

DVD-R/W was the first DVD recording format released that was compatible with standalone DVD Players.

DVD-R is a non-rewriteable format and it is compatible with about 93% of all DVD Players and most DVD-ROMs. DVD-RW is a rewriteable format and it is compatible with about 80% of all DVD Players and most DVD-ROMs.

DVD-R/W supports single side 4.37 computer GB* DVD’s (called DVD-5) and double sided 8.75 computer GB* DVD’s (called DVD-10).

120mm Standard Size
This is the most common form. The diameter of the disc is 120mm. A DVD and a CD in this size look exactly the same. Only under microscopic examination one can tell the difference. A CD in this size has standard 650MB capacity but can be up to 700MB when defying the Philips CD standard (the Yellow book). Some people prefer to use the audio CD play time to gauge the capacity. A 74 minute CD is actually a standard 650MB CD. An 80 minute CD is the 700MB CD. 700MB CD may not play on all the CD readers, especially the old ones. DVD in this size can be DVD-5, DVD-9, DVD-10, DVD-14, and DVD-18. Blu-Ray discs are available as single layer BD-25 or dual layer BD-50.

80mm Mini Size
Mini disc, as it is often called, fits right into the inner tray without the need for any adapter. Mini discs are very popular as magazine inserts or mass mailing media. A Mini CD-ROM has 185MB capacity and a Mini DVD has 1.4GB capacity. Mini CD-R usually has 210MB capacity.

Hockey Rink CD
Essentially a mini disc with the top and bottom chopped off. It was probably invented by someone who had found a broken disc still worked. There many names associated with this shape of disc. Business card CD, Hockey Rink CD, Oval CD are few examples. The capacity of a hockey rink CD varies depending upon how much of the top and bottom are cut off. Typically it will be a 61mm height CD with 50MB. Hockey Rink CD fits into the inner tray just like the mini disc.

Rectangular CD
Rectangular CD has the true look of a business card CD. It has the same functionality as the hockey rink CD and also fits into the inner tray. For a rectangular CD to fit into the inner tray, different mechanisms are used. The most common one is to have a ridge on the data side of the CD. Another way is to have the corners of the CD thinner than the part that will seat into the tray. More or less like have a hockey rink cd glued to a rectangular plastic.

Shaped CD 
Life is filled with preconceptions. One of them is that CD-ROM has to be circular. Ever since a guy discovered that a broken CD would still work, people have been making CD-ROM in different shapes. Business card CD (hockey rink or rectangular CD) is just one of the applications on such discovery.

DVD is an optical disc storage technology. DVD is bigger and faster than CD (and CD ROM) and its data storage can hold cinema quality audio and video, images, and computer file data. DVD encompasses home entertainment, computers, and business information in a single digital format. DVD has replaced laserdisc and should eventually replace videotape, audio CD and CD-ROM.

With the support of all major electronics corporations, cinema and music production companies DVD has become the most successfully electronics product for consumers worldwide

The concept of creating “regional codes” was mainly to give the film production studios commercial control over the geographical locations and times that their films would be released. With many Hollywood productions hitting the shelves in US stores at the same time as the cinemas in Europe are showing the films first time round something had to be done to control access. This lead to certain geographical regions having only DVD players that would play DVD Videos meant for that region only.

Each player is given a code for the geographical region in which it’s sold. The player will only play discs that are not coded for its region. Meaning that discs purchased abroad that are formatted for a different region simply will not be viewable.

There are seven recognized regions:

1: U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories

2: Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt)

3: Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)

4: Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean

5: Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia

6: China

7: Reserved

8: Special international venues (such as for air travel or sea cruises, etc.)

*Note region coding should not be confusion with NTSC & PAL video formats. The USA runs on a NTSC format while most of Europe runs on PAL Format. If you are looking to create discs to ship outside of the USA you should review if you also need to create a separate PAL version for you clients