Nimbus team back in harness at ODC

ODC sprung a further surprise on the industry, when it announced that it has attracted the long term services of the original Nimbus development team. ODC, now owned by Dubilier acquired the remains of the Nimbus operation from Unaxis just weeks earlier. Adrian Farmer tells One to One that James Wu, ODC's CEO started negotiations with the team of Gerald Reynolds, Dr Jonathan Halliday, Adrian Farmer and Anthony Smith only after the deal had been finalised with Unaxis.

"We knew there were discussion going on between ODC and Nimbus and after the deal was done, James Wu came to see us and we reached an agreement in 24 hours."

At Unaxis, Peter Tinner, head of data storage, expressed surprise, but not concern, over the announcement, as to the outside world it seemed the deal being brokered was to support the existing Nimbus user-base.

"We wanted to fulfil our obligations to all our existing (Nimbus) customers," Tinner explains. "We hope it will be a success for them so that they can support the customers properly. It was a big surprise for us, but its OK, if they can do a good job then that is fine." The company has now been renamed as ODC Nimbus and plans are in place to produce a new mastering system by the summer of 2005. The unit will be a merge of ODC's dye polymer process and elements of the Nimbus mechanics.

"The next step is clear," says CEO, James Wu. "We think that combining these technologies is something that is do-able and we will see a new solution at Media-Tech in May." "We are not going to try and reinvent the wheel on each other's equipment," says Farmer. "What we want to do is make sure we have a real integration that doesn't play down any of the advantages of either side." The company does not plan to abandon photo-resist, but their belief is that dye-polymer offers a better route to mastering for blue-laser discs.

"The new product will be dye-polymer because I don't think that you can go to the new formats without it,"explains Farmer.

Neither Farmer or Wu dismissed the possibility of putting the Pi back into production. They say that if there is customer demand for it, they would be able to produce more units.

For more information
Tony Holden Tel. +1 562 946 3050 Adrian Farmer Tel. +44 1600 890 007