It is interesting to note that Digitimes had an article on Thursday, August 7, 2008 about the Optical Recordable Disc manufacturer, Prodisc, with CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R and Dual Layer production lines in Taiwan and mainland China, clarifying it's position about the "rumors" that they were discontinuing optical disc product.
company chairman Ming-fa Lin:
""..Prodisc has invested more than NT$10 billion (about US$300 million) in production equipment of blank CD-R, DVD+/-R discs and has maintained a steady client base consisting of international vendors and overseas retail channels, the reason for not quitting production, Lin explained. Prodisc is negotiating with lending banks to seek their support for the company's planned turnaround and continuing production of optical discs.."
As reported by Digitimes IT news
This is after a report a day before in cens.com that Prodisc would be exiting the Optical business.
Essentially Prodisc is without capital and has plenty of troubles with Philips. It certainly would not be in Philips interest for Prodisc to exit the business although the issue is really with recordable CD production which is not as large a market as DVD which is not under the Philips royalty. The real issue is with the razor thin gross profits that translate into a loss every year and yet CMC, Ritek and Prodisc keep slugging it out. It's hard to imagine how Prodisc can continue but then it's hard to see how any of the Taiwan Optical manufacturers can continue. They continue to drop the cost of blank discs even though the manufacturing costs keep going up leaving no profit at all. They all are scrambling to shift over to other storage products like USB flash and flash cards. Prodisc has been working on a film production project producing brightness enhancement film (BEF) as well as LED lamps and aspherical polycarbonate ophthalmic lenses with a Japanese company, Omron.
These are the major manufacturers of inexpensive recordable CD-R, recordable DVD, and at least for CMC and Ritek: Blu-ray recordable manufacturing. They have driven the market hard in OEM and branded media making it a very non-economical operation. I'm certainly amazed that Prodisc would invest 300 million dollars for production equipment expecting a return on the investment.
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One of the greatest challenges with CD and DVD manufacturers has been the inkjet printable surface of a recordable disc. Many improvements have been made over time but the greatest achievement is the water-resistant surface of Taiyo Yuden. Taiyo Yuden has created a glossy and water resistant printable surface called "Watershield". Imation offers a matte white ink-jet printable surface under the brand name: "AquaGuard". Depending on your requirements each has it's place.
Imation AquaGuard matte surface gives a more muted color spectrum, helping to hide any imperfections in the label image. AquaGuard's surface is very similar to a regular inkjet printable surface in some ways. The product line spans CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R and now recordable Blu-ray or BD-R. It features a hub printable inkjet printable disc surface.
Taiyo Yuden's Watershield surface is glossy and dries very quickly. Image resolution is good and color vibrancy is high. It resembles silk-screened (although silk-screen is limited in color mixing) resolution. It's very much the surface everyone compares their attempts at copying Watershield media. Taiyo Yuden manufacturers Watershield in both CD-R and DVD-R and is distributed by Microboards Technologyin the United States. Watershield CD-R and Watershield DVD-R are hub-printable. Taiyo Yuden CDs are 52x and the DVD-R is 16X.
It's important with any print job to make sure one is putting down the right amount of ink and not too much. Many times this contributes to drying issues and in the long run financial issues ;)
It's best to use just the right amount of ink for best results. Too little or two much ink can make even the best printable disc look amateurish.
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