Acutrack Procures New Disc Offset Printing Press for DVD Printing

Acutrack recently purchased and has put into place and implemented a new disc offset printing press. In addition to screen and digital disc printing capabilities, this new offset press offers customers another option for high quality, full color CMYK (short for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key black) disc printing with a fast turn-around for DVD printing.

Offset printing delivers superior resolution and clarity. This type of printing is used only for CMYK files which require increased resolution to capture the likeness of an image. Additionally, offset printing on the disc has a higher resolution compared to silk-screen printing, with a resolution of 175 lines per inch, which can create a photo realistic representation.

The addition of this machine will allow Acutrack to maintain its status as an industry leader in CD and DVD manufacturing and printing. With a multitude of disc printing options, Acutrack will have the right printing solution that will do justice to you specific design. The acquisition of this new printing press is consistent with Acutrack's commitment to implement technological advances and offer our customers the widest variety of options within the CD and DVD industry.

This includes On Demand CD and DVD Production - a system that allows customers to manufacture CDs and DVDs on an "as needed" basis, which eliminates the up-front costs normally associated with CD or DVD production. We create custom CDs and DVDs one at a time and then can ship them world-wide directly to your clients. All you need is a webstore, shopping cart/e-commerce and your product(s). And if you don't have a webstore or e-commerce provider, check out our effortless-e-commerce.

The addition of this machine will allow Acutrack to maintain its status as an industry leader in CD and DVD manufacturing and printing. So go ahead, challenge us with your best disc designs! With our multitude of disc printing options, we will find you the one right printing solution that will do justice to you specific design.

Acutrack Interview at KPASSA for Zero Inventory On Demand Disc Production

Our Vice president Asheesh Barman was recently interviewed by the producers of KPASSA, a show that spotlights local San Francisco Bay area businesses and their work. The show, “Digital to Disc,” focused on the digital media industry and Acutrack’s new “zero-inventory” on-demand disc production model.

For the last sixteen years or so, traditional DVD and CD publishing required by musicians, filmmakers, trainers and software companies, or other content producers was limited to mass production. Minimum orders of 1000 pieces or more were needed to be profitable. The costs were paid up front, which meant marketing budgets were often slashed in order to cover these production costs prior to sales.

The new trend that Asheesh talks about in the show is the company's zero inventory model, called On Demand Disc Production, which came about after the dot com companies in the Bay area crashed. Software companies used to upgrade versions of their software all the time. Whenever they upgraded to the next version, the inventory still left from the previous version instantly became obsolete – thereby wasting a lot of money. None of these companies were able to forecast the number of sales they would have, so they kept wasting money. And in many cases, independent filmmakers and musicians were in the same boat - only for them it meant that 1000 DVDs were sitting in storage somewhere, and it was time consuming and difficult to ship them out to customers one order at a time.

Acutrack introduced their On Demand CD and DVD publishing model shortly thereafter, allowing business people in need of CD and DVD manufacturing to implement a new system where their customers could order product, one at a time.

This zero inventory model reduces costs of pre-production, storage and the waste of unused product. In other words, it saves people lots of money, which lets these content producers spend it on marketing their products, or creating more content, which is always fresh. For instance, if you are selling download-able content and are not sure how many units to produce and do not want the challenges with inventory, packaging and fulfillment, you can custom brand each CD or DVD disc with your own artwork and add value to your product. And if you are worried about the up-front cost of producing multiple titles, and you would like to deliver personalized or custom content to your customers want it, and eliminate costs associated with inventory or product obsolescence associated with pre-produced inventory, then On Demand Production is ideal for you.

On Demand orders are automatically taken and automatically produced through bar coded robotics and output professionally designed and branded retail packages one at a time, that are then shipped by Acutrack worldwide to directly to your customers. Plus you can individually customize each CD or DVD with bar codes, serial numbers, logos or pictures. And you pay at the end of the month after your customers have paid for their order generating instant positive cash flow from your titles.

Sometimes these days people ask about the fact that it seems like downloadable content is taking over the CD and DVD production industry - however we always want to take a look a the fact that the technologies required for faster downloads of bigger and bigger files such as HD video, are still young. These bandwidth limitations will probably take a few more years to overcome. And often times, people prefer to have a library of DVD or CDs, while companies enjoy the branding ability that the packaging of CD and DVD publishing provides.

As overall costs go, the DVD On Demand publishing model is extreemly cost efficient. On Demand CD and DVD Production is available in three flexible models including Download Archived CD, DVD Production on Demand or Customized Production.

On Demand Publishing and e-Commerce

After the release of our second podcast episode (On Demand CD/DVD Production), a common question we’ve received from our customers and listeners has been, “I there a way I can handle my own On Demand orders by adding e-commerce components to my website for a store?” We have CD and DVD authoring customers that range from film makers and musicians to content producers such as photographers, authors or trainers.

The On Demand concept is a system allowing the production and manufacturing of CDs and DVD duplication on an as needed basis, which allows you to sell your products one at a time and ship worldwide. It helps protect your cash flow too because we don’t bill until the end of the month. Now it is much easier to integrate a full-featured online storefront and order processing, which allows creative folks to be creative and produce as opposed to worrying about their e-commerce functionality.

Is an online store something you can set up and manage by yourself? Absolutely. But it is not easy. That's why last year we choose to do a strategic partnership with a company called Kagi, who is now Acutrack’s preferred provider of online store solutions. Frank Patchel is the president of Kagi, who knows what the challenges in this business, and it’s not as simple as it seems.

As he said, there are a number of layers of complexity involved in e-commerce, from the web design aspects, to branding the online storefront, choosing and adding shopping cart functionality, merchant account creation for MasterCard and Visa or others, content protection, privacy and security issues of both your content and the customers’ privacy, managing the downloads, backend software integration, database management, selling and then fulfillment and delivery, plus keeping track of accounting, taxes and orders processing. And this does not even include the set up for international orders where laws, languages and foreign currencies are involved.

In the end it is much easier to go with a solution like our On Demand e-commerce solution with Kagi, which is a fully hosted online storefront solution. A store wizard makes it easy to set up and maintain. Kagi offers fraud protection, buyer care, and marketing tools, such as affiliate responders that help manage customers so they will find and also come back to your store. The Internet offers a great landscape for opportunity but with that comes more competition, so it’s important to make sure that customers will find your online store in the first place, and Kagi's solution helps provide search engine optimization for that purpose.

The result of the integrated solutions of Kagi's online store for e-commerce and Acutrack's On Demand DVD authoring production and distribution will mean no-hassle e-commerce and an easy way to make your business more profitable.

HD DVD Versus Blue-rey for Independent Filmmakers

We have come a long way since the first Digital Video Disc (DVD) was released in the early 1990's. Today, high definition video is what standard definition DVD video quality was to VHS video quality back in the old days. The high definition DVD war continues between Blue-rey and HD DVD as to which format will replace standard DVDs in the future. Warner Bros. Entertainment recently announced their decision to support Blue-ray technology, while HD DVD is being backed by DreamWorks, Universal and Paramount.

So what's the main difference between HD DVD and Blue-ray? “They are different formats of discs that are used to deliver content to the end user. Both formats support high definition video, and have nothing to do with resolution,” says our Asheesh Barman, Acutrack's DVD format expert.

Why do we need both formats? We don’t need it, but technology seems to work this way - each company offers different features. Another example of this type of format war is evident in the photography world. Many new technology companies spent money researching, patenting and trade marking first SD cards, then memory sticks, and flash cards, etc.; each hoping to offer different features and beat the others in benefits in an effort to win end users and reap the gains for years to come.

General content producers, independent filmmakers, trainers and documentarians would consider cost as the main problem because they are not shooting their work in high def yet. They cannot afford HD DVD or Blu-ray because -- basically for DVD replication of 500 to 1000 copies of a film on HD DVD or Blu-Ray -- it would be too expensive. And authoring the first master disc is pretty complex when it comes to Blu-Ray and adds to the production cost. HD authoring is easier, but still not quite as cost effective.

Filmmakers can focus on producing content and marketing their work in the meantime. Many of them are using our on demand publishing model—a concept in which physical discs containing music or videos, are not manufactured, printed, packaged and fulfilled until after an order for them has been received.

Back to HD DVD versus Blue-rey, there is some confusion about the video resolution of each format, but the reality is that both formats support high definition video, which is 720 lines to 1080 lines on the TV screen. HD DVD is less expensive and easier to manufacture. Plus the interactive aspect that was co-developed by Microsoft Toshiba and Disney is much easier to use. Therefore the value is in its authoring capabilities since the discs are cheaper than Blue-rey.

Blu-ray Disc (BD) is a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). This is a group of the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers and includes Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson. Blue-rey was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), and to store large amounts of data. It offers at least five times the storage capacity than traditional DVDs -- up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. Films in high definition video are space consuming and require alot of storage capacity.

HD DVD is an optical disc format that stands for High-Definition Digital Versatile Disc, which uses a laser that allows for more data density per disc than a standard DVD. It delivers six times the picture resolution of normal DVDs, or up to 7.1 channels of high-resolution audio. One of the pluses is its interactivity and capabilities to deliver this type of content. There are basically no differences in the audio of either format.

Blu-ray discs are offered in single and dual layers, with BD 25 holding 25 gigabytes (GB) of data, and BD 50 holding 50 GB of data. HD DVD's three versions include single layer with 15 GB, dual layer with 30 GB and triple layer with 51 GB.