Taiyo Yuden to end optical disc business

[Elixer]

Japan-based Taiyo Yuden will end production of optical discs, mainly CD-R, DVD-R and BD-R, at the end of 2015 and quit the optical disc market in March 2016 due to decreasing profitability arising from depreciation of the Japanese Yen and shrinking global demand, according to the company.

With the storage size of hard disk drives (HDD) continuing to rise every year, and cloud storage becoming popular, demand for optical discs has been declining a lot faster than expected, and the company is already seeing almost no profits from the business.

For the future, Taiyo Yuden will shift its resources to developing high-end components for handsets and car electronics.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150612PD206.html

This brand was the best you can get...now, all you will find is cheap Chinese crap.

 

[ClockHound]

Well...that sucks. Marks the end of an era. There's still time to disk horde tho. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If they're exiting, how long until Ritek, CMC, and Moser Baer exit the business too? Or possibly those brands are the reason that T-Y is exiting.

Yamaha did the same thing with the optical drive market. When margins started going south, they simply exited the market altogether, rather than cost-reduce their drives down to nothing. It's honestly pretty amazing how much electronics you can find in a 24X DVD-RW drive, for $10. (The price I paid for my last batch of LG DVD-RWs, each.)

T-Y was like that as a disc brand. Never really a "cheap" brand, always sort of a premium, and always sort of "out of reach" of the common man. (FujiFilm used to sell "Made in Japan" media that was either ProDisc or T-Y sometimes, but that's long gone too.)

The last Sony DVD+Rs that I purchased, were RITEK/F16, and the TDK DVD+Rs were MBI ("Made in India").

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Still have a lot (100s) of TY DVD-Rs and made-in-Singapore Verbatim DLs.
Should be good for awhile yet

 

[StrangerGuy]

If they're exiting, how long until Ritek, CMC, and Moser Baer exit the business too? Or possibly those brands are the reason that T-Y is exiting.

Yamaha did the same thing with the optical drive market. When margins started going south, they simply exited the market altogether, rather than cost-reduce their drives down to nothing. It's honestly pretty amazing how much electronics you can find in a 24X DVD-RW drive, for $10. (The price I paid for my last batch of LG DVD-RWs, each.)

T-Y was like that as a disc brand. Never really a "cheap" brand, always sort of a premium, and always sort of "out of reach" of the common man. (FujiFilm used to sell "Made in Japan" media that was either ProDisc or T-Y sometimes, but that's long gone too.)

The last Sony DVD+Rs that I purchased, were RITEK/F16, and the TDK DVD+Rs were MBI ("Made in India").

The sad but true fact is other than tech geeks absolutely nobody give a shit about quality of DVD-Rs, made even more irrelevant when the average internet and flashdrive beats the crap out of an average DVD-Rs in reliability.

 

[blastingcap]

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150612PD206.html

This brand was the best you can get...now, all you will find is cheap Chinese crap.

Hard drives killed the optical drive star.

My NAS with six HDDs offers flexibility and redundancy that optical drives can't match, and other than the Thailand hiccup, HDDs keep going down in price as well. I can't even remember exactly when was the last time I burned onto optical disc.

 

[corkyg]

Optical disks are still my format of choice for mailing slide shows to friends and clients who do not compute. Will stock up on some CDRs and DVD-Rs. Thanks for the advisory. T-Y has made a good business decision.

 

[tcsenter]

Optical is not positioned where film was seven or eight years ago (at the precipice). It will be another four or five years to reach that point. Contraction in the market, yes, but not imminent death. BTW, new 35mm film is still available from at least three different major brand/manufacturers, for only a little higher cost than peak production/demand.

 

[Elixer]

Optical disks are still my format of choice for mailing slide shows to friends and clients who do not compute. Will stock up on some CDRs and DVD-Rs. Thanks for the advisory. T-Y has made a good business decision.

This is mainly my view as well, I don't know of another media that can be sent easily in the mail as an optical disk.

I suppose flash drives are the next best thing when optical media dries up.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Optical is not positioned where film was seven or eight years ago (at the precipice). It will be another four or five years to reach that point. Contraction in the market, yes, but not imminent death. BTW, new 35mm film is still available from at least three different major brand/manufacturers, for only a little higher cost than peak production/demand.

Speaking of which, the current Target online weekly ad, has an ad for a "Polaroid Instant Camera". They're bringing back the "instant" camera film! I was amazed to see that, in the era of smartphones we live in.

 

[LTC8K6]

Optical disks are still my format of choice for mailing slide shows to friends and clients who do not compute. Will stock up on some CDRs and DVD-Rs. Thanks for the advisory. T-Y has made a good business decision.

I used SD cards to distribute all the pics and vids of a friend's 100th birthday party to all the relatives.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Pretty sad, but not really surprising. I also have 100's of T-Y FujiFilm MIJ CD-Rs and DVD+Rs sitting in the closet. However, except for a few rare exceptions I do not ever burn them anymore. I only use DVD+Rs for OS ISOs and there was one time when I burned a DVD to pass some media files to my gf's coworker. I think in the past year I only burned 3 discs, 2 of them being windows ISO. The demand is not there. Still sad to see TY go. They were the best manufacturer and with them gone we're left with cheap RITEK, PRODISC, and CMC that are going to degrade and fail within 5 years of burning.

 

[fleshconsumed]

I used SD cards to distribute all the pics and vids of a friend's 100th birthday party to all the relatives.

Yeah, but the cheapest sd card is $2 and DVD+R is only 10 cents.

 

[LTC8K6]

Yeah, but the cheapest sd card is $2 and DVD+R is only 10 cents.

The SD card is quickly written correctly, and is reusable.

 

[corkyg]

I used SD cards to distribute all the pics and vids of a friend's 100th birthday party to all the relatives.

That can be a good alternative, however, buying 25 SD cards and mailing them costs a lot more than using opticals. Besides, not all recipients can do anything with the SD card.

Suffice it to say one will use what is convenient and cost effective. Even cheaper is to place the bundle of pics in something like Dropbox and let people download them. But, not all have that capability.

 

[LTC8K6]

That can be a good alternative, however, buying 25 SD cards and mailing them costs a lot more than using opticals. Besides, not all recipients can do anything with the SD card.

Suffice it to say one will use what is convenient and cost effective. Even cheaper is to place the bundle of pics in something like Dropbox and let people download them. But, not all have that capability.

The SD card idea was cleared with everyone.

It doesn't cost any more to mail them than it does to mail a disc.

Plus, you always get people who say their disc doesn't work.

I've never had anyone say their SD card didn't work.

 

[Batmeat]

The SD card idea was cleared with everyone.

It doesn't cost any more to mail them than it does to mail a disc.

Plus, you always get people who say their disc doesn't work.

I've never had anyone say their SD card didn't work.

Except not everyone has a card reader to accept the card. I have plenty of discs, but will stock up anyways. As far as media sharing is concerned I setup my own ftp server with user accounts for my family. Then they can download my home movies and pictures. Avoids mailing and media cost all together.

 

[corkyg]

The SD card idea was cleared with everyone.

It doesn't cost any more to mail them than it does to mail a disc.

Plus, you always get people who say their disc doesn't work.

I've never had anyone say their SD card didn't work.

SD idea cleared? I don't know what that means. I'm talking about predominately seniors who do not have SD card players in their home entertainment systems. I have not seen any SD card mailers. When I mail a disk, it goes for $0.49, standard 1st class mail.

Been sending disks to friends for over 15 years and never had one not work. SD card is fine for many, but the product cost makes it impractical for 20-25 copies.

Further, when I send a disk, it plays completely with music background. For me, disks will remain a viable option . Not saying they are better than SDs - just a useful option.

 

[OrionMaster]

HP still produces them and they are not Chinese (even if they manufacture there). I know because I bought a DVD-RW from them recently. The country of manufacturing is not as important as the overall quality control the company has

 

[Mark R]

I recently bought a box of TY BD-R discs from amazon - shipped from Japan. They had a Ritek media code!

 

[YBS1]

If we were still in the DVD era I would care, but I've never had a bad batch of BD-Rs, top shelf or off brand. I just figured the format was more robust.

 

[LTC8K6]

SD idea cleared? I don't know what that means. I'm talking about predominately seniors who do not have SD card players in their home entertainment systems. I have not seen any SD card mailers. When I mail a disk, it goes for $0.49, standard 1st class mail.

Been sending disks to friends for over 15 years and never had one not work. SD card is fine for many, but the product cost makes it impractical for 20-25 copies.

Further, when I send a disk, it plays completely with music background. For me, disks will remain a viable option . Not saying they are better than SDs - just a useful option.

Cleared means everyone knew what an SD card was and said they would be able to use one.

Most live out in the middle of nowhere, and quite a few have low end internet speeds. Several gb worth of pics and vids isn't fun even with reasonably fast internet speeds.

I actually used 16gb Kingston cards, iirc.