Shrinking number of real disc makers
 

I was looking at the list of the real disc makers of DVD blanks, and it seems like the amount of manufactures is shrinking. In addition, there seems to be significantly less manufactures for DVD Double Layers then there are for the single layers, only 5 real makers of DVD+R DL and 2 real makers of DVD-R DL. Is it just as disc get more advanced that less companies are going to be able to make them, or are the smaller companies shuting down/getting taken over by other manufactures of blank discs?

Hi pjay, great post. :)

Yes, this is becoming a cause of concern for many. There is an uneasy feeling in the air among many of us that rely on high quality DVD blanks for burned masters, archives and data backups.

The loss of Daxon was, to use a colorful metaphor, a swift kick to the crotch earlier this year. That wiped out a major high-quality blanks manufacturer.

When companies like Princo and Megan Media (MJC) went away, nobody cared! They made mediocre/crappy discs, and their loss was a benefit to consumers. The worldwide recession really shook up a lot of these low-budget slop operations and kicked them to the curb where they belonged. Some companies, Princo for example, are still in business -- but there's not any media being produced that I'm aware of. Certainly not in North America or Europe.

But the downside was that a number of good companies were taking hits, too. And to add insult to injury, consumers somehow developed these crazy ideas that media should never cost more than $20 per 100 discs! That's insane!

The push back of this unreasonable consumer demand has become obvious, as TY started to cut corners using Chinese packaging and Verbatim started to use cheap CMC discs under their new "Values Series" and "Life Series" discs.

Indeed, where have all the good media gone?

We used to have Pioneer, TDK, Maxell, Taiyo Yuden, Mitsubishi, Daxon/Sony. (I refer to manufacturers, of course, not the brands. I realize TDK, Maxell and Sony are still available -- but using third-party cheap discs from Ritek and CMC, mostly.)

And to a lesser extent, Ricoh, Infodisc, and even Optodisc was not too bad some years ago.

I'm not really aware of any takeovers, no -- it's all companies that are shuttering and closing shop for good. In some cases, companies ended production/manufacturing of blank optical media, either temporarily or permanently.

DL media is costly to produce, and the technology I think would be harder to reverse engineer cheaply as had been done with DVD-R in China. You really only have a few mainstream manufacturers, such as CMC, FTI, Ritek and Mitsubishi. Even Mitsubishi uses MBI and Falcon (FTI) for some of the manufacturing (to MCC/MKM specs, of course).

There are many more than do have double-layer DVD+R available, but I've never seen the discs, as the companies would have been for Asian markets. I don't think it would have been good stuff anyway, coming from the same folks that made inferior/fake single-layer discs.

If you like a certain disc, calculate your yearly usage and buy yourself a one-year minimum stock.

That's my take on it. :)

I try, I have in my stash of Grade A disc, 2x50 of Sony MIJ DVD-R's 2x25 packs of Sony DVD+R MIJ and 2x30 Verbatim DL and one 50 pack of Verbatim DL. I've been seeing some really good sales on Verbatim DL recently at new egg. I got one 30 pack for $25.49 after discount code, I got the rest of those Verbatim DL at about a dollar a disc. Also with Verbatim, I'm starting to think that they are going to do 2 types of disc, the "Values Series" and "Life Series" as one and the Purple or Orange packages with AZO dye for the disc as a higher grade that they (Verbatim) put out. With the "Values Series" and "Life Series" I assume there trying to get into the cheaper disc market without having to sacrifice the quality of the main discs that they themselves produce. The fact that they label the outsourced CMC disc as "Values Series" and "Life Series" and didn't just throw them into the regular Purple or Orange packs, makes me think that they want everyone in the know, to know that those are not the top grade or real Verbatim disc. Mind you this is all a theory of mine and I could be wrong.

I think your theory is quite valid. :)

In the 2x era of DVD-R, Verbatim got a temporary bad reputation for effectively replacing MCC discs with CMC discs -- a bait and switch, as far as most of us were concerned. We had to switch to another manufacturer/brand. At the time, that was easy, as TDK, PVC and Maxell were still big players. Verbatim sales likely tanked from that.

The "Value Series" is obviously a cheaper grade discs. However, the "Life Series" is likely for what they might consider "general consumer use". (TRANSLATION: Crap they'll buy because they don't know any better.)

The better AZO media may be pushed into a "Professional Series" of some kind. That's my theory.

"Life Series" also caused caused confusion at first because of the sometimes-used Data Life Plus name for the AZO discs, and at first Verbatim reps were saying they were the same thing.

I've been looking into this more recently, and there were at least 50-60 manufacturers that have gone out of business or simply ceased optical media production since the earliest onset of the recession (2007 or so). Most of them were small regional operations that made junk blanks.

I may migrate some of this information to an article in the near future, as it makes for an interesting read on how a few companies have changed hands and evolved.

What has remained unchanged is the "big ones" like Ritek, CMC, MBI, Mitsubishi/Verbatim, etc.

Just some follow-up thoughts, looking at older posts. :)

TY cutbacks
 

Another follow-up thought on this. One of the few 'first class optical media' manufacturers announced in their September 27, 2010 press release another 40% cutback in their production and inventory.
Link: http://www.yuden.co.jp/us/release/pdf/pdf_143.pdf

Let's hope they don't 'streamline' to ceasing their optical media production altogether.:(