This is good news for those of you eagerly awaiting Blu-Ray and HD DVD media prices to drop considerably.

Taiwanese disc-maker "RiData" have announced plans to mass produce re-writable variants of both formats which is the first important step towards driving prices down as competition begins to whirl up.

For now, the average price per disc will still hover around $10 each(costing the manufacturer around half that) but once other manufacturers step up to the plate and answer this move from RiData, you can be sure we'll see the prices plummet before too long.

More information at the Dailytech folks.

RiData, the Taiwanese disc-maker, announced on Tuesday that the company plans to mass produce Blu-Ray Disc Rewritable (BD-RW) discs and high-definition DVD rewritable (HD DVD-RW) discs. This is an important step in lowering cost for consumers, says InfoWorld.

The initial cost of the Blu-Ray rewritables will still be a little high, says Ritek, RiData's parent company. According to Ritek representative, Eric Ai, the average cost per disc will stay around $10 per disc in retail stores, even though production costs for the disks cost around $5 per disc. Also, Ai states that prices on Blu-Ray and HD optical disks will not likely come down until other manufacturers in Taiwan start production on the disks to increase volume.