Quote:
Just wanted to let you know that I just picked up a 50 disk cakebox of Verbatim DVD-R disks at the local Fry's and on the outer wrapper it said "Made in United Arab Emir" (aka "UAE"). I checked the ID and it is "MCC 03RG20", so I'm sort of assuming that this is "first rate media" (according to your web site). That's all. I just thought you might like to know that these MCC 03RG20 disks are now being manufactured in UAE, in addition to the other countries you have listed on your web site.
P.S. Thanks for the nice web site about DVD media.
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Media is getting to be more confusing, and honestly more depressing, as the years go by.
Verbatim DVD media made in Taiwan is manufactured for Mitsubishi at the CMC or Prodisc facilities. Verbatim has people there to oversee things (
or at least they have throughout the past, as recent as last year, according to Verbatim Europe). Disc geeks often call these "MIT" Verbatims.
Verbatim DVD media made in India is manufactured for Mitsubishi at the Moser Baur facility. Again, people on location (
or at least were historically). Disc geeks often call these "MII" Verbatims.
Verbatim DVD media made in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is manufactured by Falcon Technologies (FTI). Now Falcon media are being promoted by various online stores as "the best" and "professional" and "A grade" and all that sort of crap -- much like Ritek, Mitsui/MAM-A, Prodisc and others have done in the past. As we know, those are just marketing words. You can call a bowl of dog food "gourmet", but adjectives are just words -- not reality changers.
FTI media is getting the usual praises from people that don't know anything -- the tech lemmings that just like anything new. But testers of the media are reporting mediocre to dismal results on various forums, blogs and tech sites online.
As usual, the confused disc geek crowd is suggesting the fault of bad/inferior burns lies with the drives or the firmwares, and you need to use this one special drive, blah blah blah. More stupidity from the stupid crowd. Let's remember that Verbatim discs are revered because of how well they work in such a wide array of equipment, at any number of burns speeds, and yield high quality burns, playback and reads.
To discount some of the early bad reviews, the members of the confused disc crowd have also suggested "bad batches", as if a 25 spindle is considered a "batch" of media. A true batch of discs is many thousands of discs from a single run, not 25-100 discs in one spindle. Beyond this, we know Verbatim to be solid media with little to no problems.
Back in 2003 or so, according to reports at the time (mostly from Prodisc), Verbatim/Mitsubishi "partnered" with Prodisc, MBI and CMC, to get them in a state where they could reliably manufacture high-quality Verbatim (MCC) discs. Almost like big brother taking little brothers under his wing, and teaching them the ropes. Verbatim/MCC needed to expand past their single Singapore facility, which now serves as a "new media" plant more than anything else. I don't know that something similar happened at FTI.
We may have a situation here, like we see with brands like Maxell or Memorex, where one manufacturer's media is simply bought and re-branded. I've not seen evidence either way.
Since the down economy hit, a number of manufacturers have quite honestly sucked at communicating with journalists and websites about their products. I lost my contacts at a few manufacturers (
I assume they lost their jobs?), and the generic contact info almost never gets a response. We'll see what turns up later in the year.
