Dan Diotte, founder of VenMill Industries, explains why current disc repair technologies are lacking and how Skip-Away gets it right.
Consumer Electronics Daily News: Tell our readers about your company.
DD: We started VenMill Industries in January of 2002 in Massachusetts. I saw tremendous business opportunity in the growing CD/DVD market, specifically in the repair and maintenance of optical media. When VenMill began, we had identified the growth in the usage and reliance upon optical media formats [CDs, DVDs, game discs, mini-discs, HD-DVDs] as the prevailing format for movies, video games, music and information storage. While discs are sturdier than other media formats, they are not impervious to damage. We sold our earliest disc cleaning and maintenance machines to local video store retailers until the official launch of our first commercial product to market, the VMI 3500 Buffer, in March, 2004.
VenMill has had such great success in the commercial sector that we have been able to open a larger office, and we are excited to launch the VenMill Industries Consumer Division. We plan to put the power of commercial scale disc maintenance and repair directly into the hands of consumers with the Skip-Away.
CEDN: What makes your company unique?
DD: One main attribute that makes VenMill Industries unique lies within our approach to revolutionizing disc maintenance. We have found how to affordably miniaturize the industrial disc maintenance technology for every consumer. The result is a user-friendly disc repair device that is unrivaled by any other product currently available to consumers.
CEDN: You say your disc repair device is unrivaled by anything currently available. Can you describe the current state of disc repair?
DD: Today, consumers invest quite a bit in their entertainment catalogues but the current disc cleaning and maintenance technologies have not kept pace with the rest of the digital industry. Before our patented OptoClear™ technology, there were three types of disc maintenance products available.
Wax filling solutions can be bought off the shelves almost anywhere. While inexpensive, they are messy, a hassle to use, seldom effective and often transfer unwanted wax affecting the playability of CD/DVD drives or players. The next level in disc repair is the manual sanding machine, which requires significant training to use, is labor and time-intensive and is also quite messy. Lastly, are the automated sanding machines, then type that would normally be found in a video retail store. These machines are extremely expensive and also require significant maintenance. While they are effective in repairing damages, you can’t expect to use the product over and over without damaging the integrity of the discs. Think of it this way—if you are continually sanding down your damaged discs with hopes of taking out the scratches, you will eventually wear down the protective plastic layer found on all optical media and effect the data. Our OptoClear™ technology provides a much better way to maintain discs.
CEDN: Can you explain OptoClear™ technology and how it is unique?
DD: There is a protective plastic layer on every CD, DVD, game disc, etc. The average scratch on this surface is less than one micron deep but can greatly affect your viewing and listening experience. If you were to take a microscope and observe a cross-section of a badly scratched disc, the surface would resemble a mountain range, with numerous peaks and valleys. Sanding machines attempt to sand down the peaks, while wax solutions aim to fill in the valleys. OptoClear™ does neither.
OptoClear™ works like ironing a shirt—it applies the right combination of heat, pressure and time to iron out the peaks and valleys on the disc, better known as scratches. Once a disc is inserted, the protective plastic layer is exposed to heat, making the surface malleable. Simultaneously, the right amount of pressure is applied to smooth out the surface, turning the skipping mountain range back into a playable plane.
CEDN: You’ve been quoted recently as an expert in the format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Which do you recommend our readers purchase for their entertainment system upgrades?
DD: As we learned from the Beta/VHS war, I would recommend that consumers buy neither format and rather wait for the dominant technology to win out. Both products are extremely expensive and it would be a shame to choose the format that goes away, wasting your investment. On a more positive note, more companies are looking at providing a dual format player.
However, from our point of view, HD-DVD does hold one significant advantage over Blu-Ray. In order to fit more information on the disc, Sony has reduced the thickness of the protective plastic layer we’ve been discussing. Since the glass filled layer is so thin, as of today, all current repair technologies, including OptoClear, are ineffective or destructive. Blu-ray as a new technology has created the first compact disc that cannot be repaired.
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