CDR Sam

Taiyo Yuden Media is changing it’s name to – JVC Advanced Media U.S.A.

April 8, 2009 | Random Blackouts

NEWS – (Taiyo Yuden)
-Taiyo Yuden Media is changing it’s name to – JVC Advanced Media U.S.A. – effective immediately (as of 4/1/09).
At this time, no schedule is set for the transition to JVC named products.
All new sku’s will be under the acquired JVC brand name, current sku’s will transition in about 3-6 months.
This should bring no change to our normal day to day business selling Taiyo Yuden, just the name change to JVC.   All media will continue to be manufactured in Japan to the same high quality standards by Taiyo Yuden (now JVC Advanced Media U.S.A ).

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Rimage Producer III DVD Duplicator Publisher Systems

March 30, 2009 | Duplication Systems

I had an interesting time the other week at Rimage sales training learning about the new introductions and system changes in the Rimage Producer III disc duplicator publisher line.  The biggest change is the addition of Blu-ray recorders to the entire line.  The Blu-ray recorders can be mixed with DVD recorders or you can have a system completely dedicated to Blu-ray.  The drives support DVD as well as CD-R so you are not losing any functionality with the upgrade. Now you can have recordable Blu-ray in one hopper, DVD-R in the second hopper and CD-R in the third input bin.

Another big change (it’s been developing) is the modular design built into the Producer III series.  Drive replacement takes about 10 seconds as you can now slide out the drives without using any tools.  Even the control center can be removed and replaced.  This concept is very useful for Rimage’s advanced swap so you can have the parts available within a very short period of time.  This is all based around Rimage’s commitment to industrial on-demand disc publishing.

Another great product feature is the web interface for the Mac client.  It really makes things far easier for the networked Mac user.  It actually has some features that will be exciting to see in the PC version.  As the developer was showing this on his Mac laptop it was amusing to see him go back and forth between virtual machines, in this case a PC client.

A big change in product line-up is the discontinuation of the Rimage Amigo.  The Amigo has been around a long time, discontinued and then brought back from retirement. At one time it was the entry level unit (it has one drive) but with the whole professional line of office publishers it’s old position is somewhat obsolete.  Rimage has replaced it with the 6100 series within the Producer III line.  It uses the same robotics as the Rimage 7100n and 8100n and optional Prism Plus thermal printer or the Everest III and it’s high resolution brother the Everest 600

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MobileNAS MN4L+B2G

February 21, 2009 | Data Storage

I was groov’n on a Sans Digital MobilNAS MN4L in Black with 4 1TB SATA drives.  Linux NAS Server 4 Bay SATA Intel Pentium M LV 1.2 Ghz.  You can run RAID 5 or 6,  or RAID 0 (striping:  splits data evenly across two or more disks making one big drive with no data protection or “redundancy”),1 (mirror). The MobileNAS has one eSATA, two USB 2.0 & one Firewire 400 exteral hard drive expansion ports.    It is software based RAID using a Pentium M chip (thus why we have to have a little extra RAM on board for the computer to opearate).  On network attached storage there needs to be a computer managing the network connection and the various functions of a server.  The unit is best suited for larger data storage applications on a network and on-line video file storage.

The drives easly pop out and with a RAID 5 configuration you can keep a hot spare on-line to instantly rebuild your failing drive.

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Victor Advanced Media

February 8, 2009 | Recordable CDs

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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USB FlashDrive Duplication and Custom USB Flash Drive Printing

January 27, 2009 | USB Flash and Flash Memory

With the explosive growth of USB pen drives and the growth of custom USB flash drives for giveaway promotional USB drives I thought it time to discuss some of the options for the “do it yourself” crowd.

To start,  consideration should be made as to the requirements of the job or jobs.  Recommending a capital expense in these challenging times really needs to be thought over well. For a one-off job outsourcing your custom USB flash pen drives might be the best solution.  This reduces the expense of purchasing the equipment and let’s the publisher focus on content and print design.  Typically the turn around time is 7 business days once the graphics have been accepted. The duplication is very quick but the printing is more involved.  If you are producing promotional USB drives that represent one or two campaigns then having them pre-printed may be the answer along with a USB flash duplicator.

Typical printing is accomplished using “pad printing” which uses a silicone rubber stamp for each color.  This is done by using an indirect offset (gravure) printing process that involves an image being transferred from the printing plate (cliché) via a silicone pad onto a substrate (surface to be printed).  Pad printing inks are “solvent-based” and require mixing with additives at the time of use. They typically dry to the touch in seconds although complete drying (cure) might take a substantially longer period of time.  The equipment and inks required for this process are not for the typical office environment.  The equipment is expensive and complicated and requires special mixing of the inks.

An option to the pad printing process is to use a specialized thermal printer that applies a wax-based resin to the surface of the USB drive.  The Teac P-55C-ST USB Flash Drive Printer prints on the “cap” of a swivel type drive.  Currently

this is the only style USB flashdrive that can be printed with the Teac P-55 thermal re-transfer printer.

Duplication of data on USB drives is performed by a specialized duplicator that has ports for each drive and a ‘master’ slot for the drive being copied depending on the system configuration. Some duplicators are “standalone” and some are “PC-attached”.  Standalone USB flash duplicators rely on a built in solid state controller that manages the duplication data transfer.  PC attached USB duplicators use the computer’s USB port or hard drive to transfer data and manage the duplication verification process.  Standalone is great for class room applications and after presentation file transfers.

PC based systems give you the ultimate control to manage your data transfer and ability to change files on the fly. Which ever system one chooses the power to duplicate to a large segment of USB drives certainly beats the alternatives.

USB duplicators range from 7 ports up to 118 port USB duplicator

There is a wide range of capacity among USB flash duplicators but one thing is for certain: Your needs for capacity will increase.  Brands to consider? CD Dimensions,  Microboards Technology,  Nexcopy,  MF Digital and Teac USB flash duplicators.  Flash duplication represents a new era of physical data distribution.

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