DVD media & services

Emedia Professional, May, 1999

Americ Disc Invests $10 Million in DVD Expansion Program

Americ Disc, a provider of CD/DVD manufacturing services and other optical disc media, has announced plans to invest $10 million in expanding its California DVD replication facility. The company is gearing up for a monthly capacity of 700,000 units. Americ Disc has experienced increasing demand for DVD and believes the California plant, which also manufactures CDs, is ideal for growth because of its "strategic position close to the west coast film and video industry."

(Americ Disc Inc., 5042 Boulevard Thimens, Sant-Laurent, Quebec, Canada, H4R 2B2; 888/666-6096, 514/745/2244; Fax 514/745-7650; http://www.americdisc.com)

Philips Approved to Market DVD Licenses

Now that the U.S. Justice Department has given its approval, Philips will start selling patent licenses necessary for DVD production to hardware and software makers that are not members of the ten-company patent pool it represents.

The patent pool was formed in 1996 after Philips and Sony broke away from the stalled industry-wide DVD patent licensing talks and announced they would license jointly, as they do with audio CDs. Several other industry leaders, including Pioneer, Matsushita, and Toshiba, soon joined them, with Philips designated the official licensing agent.

The licenses offered by Philips include rights to essential patents for DVD-Video/ROM technologies and Philips MPEG-2 audio, but do not cover encoding or decoding of MPEG-2 video or patents held by non-pool members. Player and disc licenses cost $10,000 up-front, with half credited against royalties. Philips has also been authorized to license patents for AC-3 audio.

(Philips Electronics, 3200 North First Street, San Jose. CA 95134; 408/570-5644; Fax 408/570-5757; http://www.philips.com)