Catalyst Logic, a distributor and publisher of pre-recorded DVD discs on June 26 announced it has obtained agent rights from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to distribute Blu-ray Disc (BD) discs featuring movies produced by Sony Pictures in the Taiwan market and plans to introduce 100 BD movies this year. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is the home video distributing unit of Sony Pictures, according to industry sources in Taiwan. Catalyst plans to initially introduce 40 BD movies for launch in July and then add three to five movies monthly in the third quarter and more movies a month in the fourth, resulting in a total of 100 BD movies for the year, company president Eric Lin pointed out.
The retail price of a BD disc of a newly released movie will be set at NT$998 (US$30.4) and that of a classic movie at NT$798 (US$24.3), compared to US$19.
9-39.9 in the US market, Lin indicated. As such prices are not much higher than those of DVD movie discs in the Taiwan market, the pricing is to drive demand for BD movie discs, Lin explained.
While DVD is likely to remain the mainstream format of movie discs in Taiwan this year, Catalyst expects the demand for BD movie discs to grow fast over the next two to three years, Lin said. In addition to Sony Pictures, Catalyst plans to negotiate a Taiwan sales rights with the top eight movie studios in Hollywood and independent movie producers, Lin pointed out. Catalyst Logic president Eric Lin shows BD discs of movies produced by Sony Pictures Kingmax takes controlling stake in Catalyst (May 16) One million and counting for Blu-ray Disc (Apr 23) Taiwan maker U-Tech turns out pre-recorded HD DVD discs (Mar 13) Taiwan market: Catalyst to sell own-brand DVD players/recorders (Jan 17) Pre-recorded discs here to stay, says U-Tech (Sep 15) Taiwan-based Catalyst to provide Chinese-language movies to Amazon (Sep 12) Taiwan-developed HD-FVD Media Center to be offered next quarter (Jun 22) Taiwan movie disc distributor Catalyst Logic to offer IP STBs, video MMC (Mar 28) Internet TV revenue to grow nearly 14-fold by 2011, says iSuppli Shipments of Windows Mobile-based devices to top 20 million units in 2008 Toshiba announces new notebooks Lenovo to push sales of consumer PCs, says chairman ASRock to challenge 12 million motherboards in 2007, says paper Ralink aims at quick expansion in Wi-Fi market China brought in over 3 billion yuan from overseas software development services in 1Q07 Applied Materials acquires HCT to extend its solar reach Xilinx shipping Spartan-3A DSP devices in production Globe Industries announces patents for touchscreen materials, paper says Affinity and TPG propose to acquire UTAC Qimonda extends foundry deal with Winbond, technology transfer down to 58nm SAS hard drive shipments grow exponentially in 2006 Chunghwa Telecom may reach larger than forecast 3G user base at end of 2007 Iomega offering new portable and eSATA hard drives Intel G35 chipsets will not support DirectX 10 until 2008 VIA introduces new Mini-ITX motherboards Catalyst Logic, a distributor and publisher of pre-recorded DVD discs on June 26 announced it has obtained agent rights from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to distribute Blu-ray Disc (BD) discs featuring movies produced by Sony Pictures in the Taiwan market and plans to introduce 100 BD movies this year.
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