REPLICATION, PACKAGING, DUPLICATION, PRINTING SYSTEMS AND EQUIPMENT THE MODELS

The International Journal Dedicated to Replication and Related Services ON OFFER 6TH YEAR - N° 9 SEPTEMBER 2008 - EDITOR IN CHIEF: ANGELO FRIGERIO From page 20 to page 21 Focus on DataPlay takes over Datarius Operations will resume immediately. The company, which has been working with the Austrian manufacturer on producing reference drives for the Databank since 2005, wants to sustain the business of measurement and testing. And to develop a new range of flexible and scalable products for the . The CEO Bill Almon states: “This is a tremendous opportunity for us to become more than just a core technology supplier”. Page 8

Companies MEDIA-TECH ASSOCIATION Page 12 NEW EVENT WILL BE “THE FUTURE OF PACKAGED ENTERTAINMENT” GÖDING + PARTNER SINGULUS TECHNOLOGIES In a bid to offer a more efficient and cost effective business and contacts platform, but also to give the optical-disc industry new opportunities and prospects, the Media-Tech Complete solutions “Packaged media will be Association (MTA) has announced a partnership with the Content Delivery and Storage for quality and economy with us for a long time” Association to stage a new event in February 2009 in Hollywood. Ralf Stecker, Technical Service Sylvia Hitzel, Vice President and Sales OD department Marketing & Sales CDA – GERMANY Page 14 INVESTMENTS IN THE BLU-RAY DISC GET UNDER WAY The independent German replicator steps into the BD arena with the installation of a Singulus line. “We rise to our customers’ requirements to be a one-stop supplier for all formats. Our own production of Blu-ray discs is an investment in the future” TRENDS & HOME VIDEO MARKET VIDEOGAME The DVD Grand

(Conv. in Legge 27/02/2004 N.46) - Art. 1 Comma D.C.B. Milano Stampa: Ingraph- Seregno (MI) (Conv. market manoeuvres Resistenza, 23 - 20036 Meda (Mi) - Tel/Fax +39 0362 600463/4/5/9 -E-Mail: [email protected] - Periodico mensile Resistenza, 23 - 20036 Meda (Mi) Tel/Fax in 2007 in autumn Price dynamics, the appearance of “new” Ready for the Christmas 2008 campaign. genres (like TV series on DVD), the impact In the gaming world there has been of publishing supplements at the newsstands, a succession of announcements and the drop in rentals and the start-up of high strategic moves that are destined definition last year. to make their mark. Page 10 Page 6 From page 18 to page 19 Page 17 Registrazione al Trib. di Milano N° 323 del 19 maggio 2003 - Poste Italiane Spa Spedizione Abbonamento Postale D.L. 353/2003 Registrazione al Trib. Editore: Edizioni Turbo Srl - Sede Legale: via Palestro, 24 - 20038 Seregno (MI) - Sede operativa: Palazzo di Vetro Corso della Srl - Sede Legale: via Palestro, 24 20038 Seregno (MI) operativa: Palazzo di Vetro Editore: Edizioni Turbo www.replixmag.com

“This is a tremendous opportunity for us to become more than just a core technology supplier” Focus on DataPlay takes over Datarius www.dataplay.com Operations will resume immediately. The company, which has been working with the Austrian manufacturer on producing reference drives for the Databank since 2005, wants to sustain the business of measurement and testing. And to develop a new range of flexible and scalable products for the optical disc.

negotiating with the insolvency admin- DataPlay. When was the company istrator in Innsbruck, who represented founded? the interests of all the creditors, with a DataPlay was a company from the view to purchasing all the assets and to late 1990s that invested to bring to the restarting the Datarius activities. The market a very small optical disc sys- purchase was concluded on 20th of tem: the media was 32mm in diameter August. We are very pleased with the and the drive was a small package way the operation has been handled. In about the size of a cigarette pack. This a period of six weeks, we were able to was the world smallest optical disc satisfy all the insolvency administra- drive system, and still had a capacity of tor’s requests, provide an adequate 500mb. At the beginning it was used by purchase price, enable the continuity of some music labels to distribute music service for Datarius’ clients, maintain in a small compact portable format. In an employee base in Austria, and pro- the process of developing all of the vide a solid infrastructure for future technology required, DataPlay has pro- growth. duced more than 200 patents applica- tions, more than 150 of which have In your press release you pro- been issued since the late ‘90s. pose to “quickly develop and man- Unfortunately the concept of the micro ufacture new products that exceed optical disc didn’t really take off. So the current and future needs of what we did was take the engineering optical media manufacturers”. team and focus on new opportunities to How will this proposal work out in license the patented technologies and the specific integration of your to develop new applications that could activities with those of Datarius? utilize those technologies. The integration of our business with Datarius’s has several important And so you started working on aspects. The combined development optical drive technology for OEMs. teams in Austria and the U.S. will allow Yes. Among the applications we had for faster product development and developed were the reference test better customer support. Datarius’s drives for Datarius. But our activities strong point has always been the fact also evolved into other optical disc that it operates with a good margin, related products. We have been very especially compared to other competi- active in the developing and marketing tors. The overall structure for Datarius of solutions for the “DVD Download” was just too large compared to the format, providing hardware for CSS profits that were being generating by encrypted content burning. And we Bill Almon, CEO of the company The end of August brought the Magazine interviewed Bill Almon, CEO the business. We saw the opportunity have also been very active in the announcement that Datarius has been of the newly-created company DPHI to utilise our vertical integration and Trusted Computing Group (TCG) - a taken over by the Colorado-based com- Datarius, and asked him about the reduction the operating expenses to group of some 150 to 200 companies pany, DataPlay. DataPlay has acquired takeover and about the future projects improve those gross margins and yield devoted to providing trusted platform Datarius’s assets and intellectual prop- of the “new” Datarius. a profitable operation. models that today are used in note- erty globally, and announced the deci- books, desktop PCs, enterprise sys- sion to restart activity immediately. First of all, can you tell us what What can you tell us about the tems, mobile telephones and basically Datarius, with a history of providing led you to decide to buy out future and the development of new in all kinds of storage devices. The systems for measuring and testing opti- Datarius? solutions? trusted platform solution that we’ve cal discs in the replication industry, had It is important to understand that Integration with Datarius will pro- been concentrating on is one for optical started bankruptcy proceedings in July. DataPlay has been providing the essen- vide a strong boost to both fields of disc systems, providing an automatic The late solution of the dual high-defi- tial technology for Datarius test drives activity. In terms of products, thanks to hardware-based encryption capability nition format war delayed the expected for some time. We have been working the combination of our experience and for any optical disc format using stan- installation of high definition lines in this industry for two and a half years of the competences we have developed dard off the shelf discs. throughout the industry and therefore providing the core component technol- over the years in research and develop- caused the company economic difficul- ogy for the testers. Being a supplier, we ment at our US plants, with the experi- What are your expectations for ties. were obviously very concerned with the ence and expertise that Datarius has DPHI Datarius’s business? Datarius has developed a modular insolvency of Datarius - which actually built up in the business of measure- We have very high expectations. We solution for testing optical discs, the started on July 1st. But at the same ment and testers, we are convinced believe our business could grow easily Databank, which is a single platform time, we saw in this a tremendous that we will be able to provide very double in the next several years. A that can operate with different mod- opportunity for us to become more than attractive products for the market. One growth that will be predominantly ules suited to the various formats on just a core technology supplier. And to of our core technologies is already based on the increasing adoption and the market: CD, DVD, HD DVD and Blu- actually become a supplier in measure- being used by Datarius, and we can sales of the Blu-ray Disc format and ray disc. ment and test systems for the optical already offer a stamper test technology thus on the increasing need for sure, DataPlay has worked with Datarius disc manufacturing industry and use that has no rivals. We seek to continue reliable measurement and test equip- for many years, providing the optical- the larger combined development team to devote our efforts to bringing com- ment. We will concentrate on providing REPLIX MAGAZINE drive technology integrated in its prod- to introduce a flexible and scalable pelling new solutions onto the market a wide array of products for the meas- ISSUE 9 ucts. The relationship between the two new range of products. for the testing and measurement of urement and test requirements of cus- SEPTEMBER 2008 companies goes back to 2005, and has and BDs. tomers who are doing replication and www.replixmag.com led to their development of technolo- How was the takeover managed? duplication. 8 gies for the Databank products. Replix The process consisted mainly in Let’s trace a brief history of Giovanni Verbi