Archive for the ‘Recordable CDs’ Category
I was reading over some old posts on another blog and a ran across an article in May, 2oo8 about a union between Taiyo Yuden and JVC. JVC sold Taiyo Yuden a share in it's media business which they had put under the subsidiary Victor Company of Japan and it is now re-structured as Victor Advanced Media. There is documentation on the agreement between JVC and Taiyo Yuden to sell part of thel JVC media concern (Victor Company of Japan) in order to strengthen core businesses. So now since July 2008 the new company, Victor Advanced Media has been operating in Japan reselling Taiyo Yuden CDs and DVDs. This is a link to the original documentation from JVC Press Release May 26th,2008
On October 1st Taiyo Yuden announced: ...Following stock acquisition, Victor Advanced Media will be included in Taiyo Yuden’s scope of consolidation as a subsidiary company from the third quarter of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009. The effect of the acquisition on the company’s consolidated performance for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009 is expected to be insignificant.
Link to TY press release
So Taiyo Yuden now owns JVC media business which would include intellectual rights to the disc technology. Hmm I wonder what Taiyo Yuden wants with that? I guess we will see after March 31st, 2009
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Taiyo Yuden has recently released a new silver inkjet printable watershield recordable CD. It features a hub printable glossy silver surface and all the benefits of Taiyo Yuden's Water Shield CD. Designed for inkjet disc printers it dries very fast avoiding smudges. It is 52x compatible and comes packaged in 50 disc spindles.
Taiyo Yuden Watershield offers water resistance, glossy finish and an amazing silver print surface. Like regular silver inkjet printable CDs the surface has a iridescent depth unlike any other CD printable surface. Silver gives a reflective three dimensional image highlighting the color of the label. Silver surfaced printable discs looks better then a silk screened disc. Color mixing is incredible with Taiyo Yuden Watershield recordable CD discs.
Inkjet printable Taiyo Yuden Watershield provides an excellent method of disc printing using convenient ink-jet printing technology. Taiyo Yuden Watershield is ideal for printing with the leading disc printer manufacturers including Epson, Microboards, R-Quest, Primera, Rimage, MF Digital and Recordex.
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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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According to Digitimes Prodisc is planning to discontinue CD-R production. This is the continuing saga of the Philips action against several Taiwan CD-R manufacturers over royalty payments.
CMC, Ritek and Prodisc have been in negotiation with Philips since last year when the last license ran out. Digitimes had pointed out that the troubles for Prodisc really started with them publicly
protesting how unfair the royalty program is. Philips requested and received a request to seize assets of Prodisc in Taiwan which includes a manufacturing facility and money in a bank account.
Stay Tuned
This is a link to the full story Digitimes article
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There is a new manufacturer of CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R, Dual Layer and Blu-ray (BD-R) called Falcon Technologies International.
FTI is a new bred of recordable disc manufacturer with an eye on consistanly superior printable surfaces in both thermal printable and inkjet printable discs.
I have printed a lot of discs and I was blown away by the color reproduction with our HP based CD printer. Unlike Taiyo Yuden, Falcon has a phthalocyanine based dye that appears as a silver gold on the burning side. Swiss and Japanese engineers.
There has not been a lot of choices out there (outside of Taiwan). Don't get me wrong Taiwan is a great but the "big three" have been caught in non-profitable struggle for a few years and consistency has been an issue. All depends on who they are making the product for and at what price. There is a saying in many languages that you can have cheap or you can have quality but you can't have both ;) CMC, Ritek and Prodisc are the "big three". Lot's of second tier manufacturers (smaller operations, some better, some worse). There has been a lot of consolidation in recordable CD-R media and recordable DVD industry. Imation has taken over TDK production except for Blu-ray and the magnetic tape group. Most of the brands you know are actually OEM'd to the big three or a combination of second tier manufacturers in China and Taiwan. It's really an economy of scale solution.
So with great excitement I have been running Falcon Technologies CD and DVD recordables through their paces. It costs a little more and you are not going to find it at your
local paperclip store just yet but if you need some good printable recordable discs then Falcon Media is the way to go. The product is engineered with quality as the number one priority.
Easy to say I know. They really do it.
manufacturer site:
http://www.falconrak.com
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