
Withdrawal from the Recording Media Business - ytch
http://www.t-yuden.com/news/Pid=192_detail.html
======
PythonicAlpha
There are two problems with the recording media business:

\- Because of cloud usage and low prices for hard drives, the usage of
recording media is vanishing

\- The market for CD-R, DVD-Recordables and others was always dominated by the
price ... most customers just looked at the price tag, not on the quality of
the media.

It is really a sad thing, because TY is really one of the last quality
oriented producer of recording media around.

What is the advantage, I have, when I safe 10ct on the disc, but loose it
after one year, because of bad quality? But there where just to few people
around with such thinking (other companies already stopped producing higher
priced media long ago).

Edit:

When I write about "quality" I don't primarily mean the trouble of buffer-
underruns or wrong writes, but the problem, that many lower cost discs are
prone to fail after rather short time of storage. As much I know, the TY discs
not only made less troubles in writers, but also last longer as other discs.
And also there are legit usages of CD-R(W)s -- I used them long time as backup
media -- but without quality suppliers, it is no option any more (the size of
the discs would not necessarily be a problem, since when I backup only
sources, they still fit).

~~~
ytch
The old time that

\- Burning disc with the fear of Buffer underrun.

\- sharing recording disc with friends and making new friends just because you
have a CD/DVD burning device.

\- Researching how to bypass the protection (though somehow illegal).

is passed.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
Yes, but again we have the same trouble (as before the optical media era):
Either you make no backups at all or when you have a rock-solid backup-
solution, you must buy very expensive hardware.

Of course you can do backups into the cloud ... or on hard drives -- that is
today the only solution that is still not so costly for normal users. But in
my opinion, a sub-optimal solution.

~~~
noonespecial
About 10 years ago, all of my family photos fit on one 8gig drive. When I
retired this drive after years of use, I copied all of the pictures on this
drive to a dozen CD-R's. I put both on a shelf in my bedroom closet.

10 years on, 9 of 12 CD-Rs are unreadable or have substantial data loss. The
hard disk is 14 years old. Every checksum is still correct.

Hard disks were the best backup medium for the average consumer back then.
They still are. Now they are super easy because they are USB.

Put a 2.5" 1TB external USB in your safe deposit box. Your kids will love
whats on it 20 years from now.

~~~
hga
Except that I'll bet you didn't use Taiyo Yuden or equivalent quality discs. I
have, first one batch of Kodak Golds 15 years ago, then Taiyo Yuden, and
haven't yet suffered a data loss yet.

Although now that my data has gotten large enough I'm using LTO tape backup.

~~~
DanBC
Good quality discs, in tyvek sleeves, with no writing on the discs, stored in
temperature and humidity and light controled environment: it's not trivial for
people to achieve.

~~~
hga
Which company made the discs?

ADDED: I see you aren't who started this sub-sub-thread.

But I'd add that except for the environmental control, you don't have to go to
great extremes, CD-Rs are physically rather robust. But you did/do have to do
your research, to discover that you need to buy Taiyo Yuden or MAM-A media,
and get discs from a reputable source (there was a lot of TY counterfeiting
some time ago), and store them properly.

------
kqr2
What is the best alternative for archive grade media?

~~~
hackuser
A very useful discussion, based on an interview with a Library of Congress
specialist:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8198253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8198253)

------
ScottWhigham
_The Company currently expects that the impact of this business withdrawal on
its corporate earnings will be immaterial._

I guess I don't know much about this company - is this line shocking because
they are such a prominent player, or is this line more of a "We really didn't
do much in this area thus nothing will really change"?

~~~
wmf
They claim to have been "the market leader for optical recording media",
although I suspect they were not leading in volume or revenue. The blank disc
market is basically gone, so it doesn't hurt them to get out of that business.

~~~
cdr
They were pretty huge in volume at one point, mostly wholesale and rebranded.
I don't know about now. 10-15 years ago you would always look for CD/DVD blank
deals that were rebranded TY, and they were never difficult to find. When they
got cheap enough I switched to just ordering large spindles of actual TY.

~~~
ytch
BTW, some of their products are under the brand "That's". This name is common
around East Asia.

