3 ms·

Withdrawal from the Recording Media Business

52 points by ytch 11y ago

ScottWhigham 11y ago
The Company currently expects that the impact of this business withdrawal on its corporate earnings will be immaterial. I guess I don't know much about this company - is this line shocking because they are such a prominent player, or is this line more of a "We really didn't do much in this area thus nothing will really change"?
- wmf 11y ago
  They claim to have been "the market leader for optical recording media", although I suspect they were not leading in volume or revenue. The blank disc market is basically gone, so it doesn't hurt them to get out of that business.
  - ytch 11y ago
    Yeah, back to CD-R and DVD(+-)R era, TAIYO YUDEN is the representation of high quality disc. But the era of optical disc recording is gone, so it's a good decision to close blink disc business from business view. For normal people like me, just have a felling that another era is gone, like the floppy disk, PCI sound card, dial-up modem, CRT monitor, film camera and so on.
  - cdr 11y ago
    They were pretty huge in volume at one point, mostly wholesale and rebranded. I don't know about now. 10-15 years ago you would always look for CD/DVD blank deals that were rebranded TY, and they were never difficult to find. When they got cheap enough I switched to just ordering large spindles of actual TY.
    - ytch 11y ago
      BTW, some of their products are under the brand "That's". This name is common around East Asia.
- BossHogg 11y ago
  There was a time when they were considered the top brand for consumer grade CD-Rs and DVD-Rs.
  - PythonicAlpha 11y ago
    In quality, I don't know a brand, that is better. Others that where, have already given up (eg. Kodak). For example, I read that Sony once had good discs, but today are just re-branding discs of a much lower-quality brand.
    - qrmn 11y ago
      Indeed. Taiyo-Yuden were (still are, until December) one of the very best of the actual manufacturers of optical media: and they explicitly cite that optical media is losing its relevance as why they're ceasing operations in that market. I think this is of historical significance: it's a sea-change moment, with a leading manufacturer essentially conceding that optical media is no longer relevant and can never catch up, destined to fade into the past. Those of us of a certain vintage will remember a similar thing happening to floppy disks - and there are lessons to be learnt from that. Grab a few of these and carefully hang onto them, in the dark and away from heat sources - while you'll still be able to get them in a decade's time, it'll probably be impossible to find any new good-quality media then: so on the basis that you might want one when you least expect it, have a couple handy just in case. There's a certain melancholy here, having seen this technology through its entire lifecycle - but at least we don't have to worry about scratching USB mass storage devices. I think I have only one PC which still has an optical drive, and it's the one which still has a floppy drive. Maybe we'll replace spinning rust, and flash memory, too, in time.
- hga 11y ago
  They were certainly prominent in terms of quality CD-Rs; you could buy more expensive ones, but you didn't really need to.
- desdiv 11y ago
  According to their 2014 annual report[0], optical media made up for only 7% of their revenue. [0] http://www.yuden.co.jp/ut/ir/files/news/54376eba6d579.pdf http://www.yuden.co.jp/ut/ir/files/news/54376eba6d579.pdf
- bhouston 11y ago
  Their disks were sold under the brands names Fujifilm, maxwell, Sony, Panasonic, Plextor, Tdk and verBatim and that's brands.
PythonicAlpha 11y ago
There are two problems with the recording media business: - Because of cloud usage and low prices for hard drives, the usage of recording media is vanishing - The market for CD-R, DVD-Recordables and others was always dominated by the price ... most customers just looked at the price tag, not on the quality of the media. It is really a sad thing, because TY is really one of the last quality oriented producer of recording media around. What is the advantage, I have, when I safe 10ct on the disc, but loose it after one year, because of bad quality? But there where just to few people around with such thinking (other companies already stopped producing higher priced media long ago). Edit: When I write about "quality" I don't primarily mean the trouble of buffer-underruns or wrong writes, but the problem, that many lower cost discs are prone to fail after rather short time of storage. As much I know, the TY discs not only made less troubles in writers, but also last longer as other discs. And also there are legit usages of CD-R(W)s -- I used them long time as backup media -- but without quality suppliers, it is no option any more (the size of the discs would not necessarily be a problem, since when I backup only sources, they still fit).
- ytch 11y ago
  The old time that - Burning disc with the fear of Buffer underrun. - sharing recording disc with friends and making new friends just because you have a CD/DVD burning device. - Researching how to bypass the protection (though somehow illegal). is passed.
  - PythonicAlpha 11y ago
    Yes, but again we have the same trouble (as before the optical media era): Either you make no backups at all or when you have a rock-solid backup-solution, you must buy very expensive hardware. Of course you can do backups into the cloud ... or on hard drives -- that is today the only solution that is still not so costly for normal users. But in my opinion, a sub-optimal solution.
    - noonespecial 11y ago
      About 10 years ago, all of my family photos fit on one 8gig drive. When I retired this drive after years of use, I copied all of the pictures on this drive to a dozen CD-R's. I put both on a shelf in my bedroom closet. 10 years on, 9 of 12 CD-Rs are unreadable or have substantial data loss. The hard disk is 14 years old. Every checksum is still correct. Hard disks were the best backup medium for the average consumer back then. They still are. Now they are super easy because they are USB. Put a 2.5" 1TB external USB in your safe deposit box. Your kids will love whats on it 20 years from now.
kqr2 11y ago
What is the best alternative for archive grade media?
- desdiv 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC
- hackuser 11y ago
  A very useful discussion, based on an interview with a Library of Congress specialist: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8198253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8198253
- hga 11y ago
  In theory MAM-A Silver or Gold CD-R media, but you'd need to check if they (still) are really archival quality. I didn't way back when because Taiyo Yuden was judged to be good enough (and that might have been before Mitsui/MAM were making high quality media). It's also possible there's good Bluray recordable media; I switched to LTO tape instead of going in that direction.

52 points by ytch 11y ago

The Company currently expects that the impact of this business withdrawal on its corporate earnings will be immaterial. I guess I don't know much about this company - is this line shocking because they are such a prominent player, or is this line more of a "We really didn't do much in this area thus nothing will really change"?

wmf 11y ago
They claim to have been "the market leader for optical recording media", although I suspect they were not leading in volume or revenue. The blank disc market is basically gone, so it doesn't hurt them to get out of that business.
- ytch 11y ago
  Yeah, back to CD-R and DVD(+-)R era, TAIYO YUDEN is the representation of high quality disc. But the era of optical disc recording is gone, so it's a good decision to close blink disc business from business view. For normal people like me, just have a felling that another era is gone, like the floppy disk, PCI sound card, dial-up modem, CRT monitor, film camera and so on.
- cdr 11y ago
  They were pretty huge in volume at one point, mostly wholesale and rebranded. I don't know about now. 10-15 years ago you would always look for CD/DVD blank deals that were rebranded TY, and they were never difficult to find. When they got cheap enough I switched to just ordering large spindles of actual TY.
  - ytch 11y ago
    BTW, some of their products are under the brand "That's". This name is common around East Asia.
BossHogg 11y ago
There was a time when they were considered the top brand for consumer grade CD-Rs and DVD-Rs.
- PythonicAlpha 11y ago
  In quality, I don't know a brand, that is better. Others that where, have already given up (eg. Kodak). For example, I read that Sony once had good discs, but today are just re-branding discs of a much lower-quality brand.
  - qrmn 11y ago
    Indeed. Taiyo-Yuden were (still are, until December) one of the very best of the actual manufacturers of optical media: and they explicitly cite that optical media is losing its relevance as why they're ceasing operations in that market. I think this is of historical significance: it's a sea-change moment, with a leading manufacturer essentially conceding that optical media is no longer relevant and can never catch up, destined to fade into the past. Those of us of a certain vintage will remember a similar thing happening to floppy disks - and there are lessons to be learnt from that. Grab a few of these and carefully hang onto them, in the dark and away from heat sources - while you'll still be able to get them in a decade's time, it'll probably be impossible to find any new good-quality media then: so on the basis that you might want one when you least expect it, have a couple handy just in case. There's a certain melancholy here, having seen this technology through its entire lifecycle - but at least we don't have to worry about scratching USB mass storage devices. I think I have only one PC which still has an optical drive, and it's the one which still has a floppy drive. Maybe we'll replace spinning rust, and flash memory, too, in time.
hga 11y ago
They were certainly prominent in terms of quality CD-Rs; you could buy more expensive ones, but you didn't really need to.
desdiv 11y ago
According to their 2014 annual report[0], optical media made up for only 7% of their revenue. [0] http://www.yuden.co.jp/ut/ir/files/news/54376eba6d579.pdf http://www.yuden.co.jp/ut/ir/files/news/54376eba6d579.pdf
bhouston 11y ago
Their disks were sold under the brands names Fujifilm, maxwell, Sony, Panasonic, Plextor, Tdk and verBatim and that's brands.

PythonicAlpha 11y ago

There are two problems with the recording media business: - Because of cloud usage and low prices for hard drives, the usage of recording media is vanishing - The market for CD-R, DVD-Recordables and others was always dominated by the price ... most customers just looked at the price tag, not on the quality of the media. It is really a sad thing, because TY is really one of the last quality oriented producer of recording media around. What is the advantage, I have, when I safe 10ct on the disc, but loose it after one year, because of bad quality? But there where just to few people around with such thinking (other companies already stopped producing higher priced media long ago). Edit: When I write about "quality" I don't primarily mean the trouble of buffer-underruns or wrong writes, but the problem, that many lower cost discs are prone to fail after rather short time of storage. As much I know, the TY discs not only made less troubles in writers, but also last longer as other discs. And also there are legit usages of CD-R(W)s -- I used them long time as backup media -- but without quality suppliers, it is no option any more (the size of the discs would not necessarily be a problem, since when I backup only sources, they still fit).

ytch 11y ago
The old time that - Burning disc with the fear of Buffer underrun. - sharing recording disc with friends and making new friends just because you have a CD/DVD burning device. - Researching how to bypass the protection (though somehow illegal). is passed.
- PythonicAlpha 11y ago
  Yes, but again we have the same trouble (as before the optical media era): Either you make no backups at all or when you have a rock-solid backup-solution, you must buy very expensive hardware. Of course you can do backups into the cloud ... or on hard drives -- that is today the only solution that is still not so costly for normal users. But in my opinion, a sub-optimal solution.
  - noonespecial 11y ago
    About 10 years ago, all of my family photos fit on one 8gig drive. When I retired this drive after years of use, I copied all of the pictures on this drive to a dozen CD-R's. I put both on a shelf in my bedroom closet. 10 years on, 9 of 12 CD-Rs are unreadable or have substantial data loss. The hard disk is 14 years old. Every checksum is still correct. Hard disks were the best backup medium for the average consumer back then. They still are. Now they are super easy because they are USB. Put a 2.5" 1TB external USB in your safe deposit box. Your kids will love whats on it 20 years from now.

kqr2 11y ago

What is the best alternative for archive grade media?

desdiv 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC
hackuser 11y ago
A very useful discussion, based on an interview with a Library of Congress specialist: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8198253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8198253
hga 11y ago
In theory MAM-A Silver or Gold CD-R media, but you'd need to check if they (still) are really archival quality. I didn't way back when because Taiyo Yuden was judged to be good enough (and that might have been before Mitsui/MAM were making high quality media). It's also possible there's good Bluray recordable media; I switched to LTO tape instead of going in that direction.