I went to Circuit City today, they had TDK 50 packs all over the store and I got the last one made by Taiyo Yuden. Others were all made by CMC in Taiwan.
Three years ago when I owned a 4x burner, media seemed to be a big issue, I read a review at cdmediaworld.com, which claimed Ritek and CMC made CDRs of the poorest quality.
I have not burned many CDs since then although I did upgrade my burner twice. I would be very interested in any lastest scientific test results about TY and CMC discs, especially comparision between TDK brand TY and CMC CDRs.
The dye for TDK made by TY is cyanine (Type 1), which is quite old technology and may have longetivity problem, the dye CMC uses is Phthalocyanine (Type 6), which is relatively new technology.
The CDR technonogy is very mature now. If you have good equipment, I guess you can produce good products.
I would like to hear the comments by those who have used TY and CMC made CDRs lately.
The news below is from Google Groups.
Now moving to the CMC Magnetics factory, per this item on
www.cdrinfo.com:
------------------------
"...CMC Magnetics Corp., Taiwan's leading manufacturer of storage media,
recently acquired orders for 20 million rewritable compact discs from TDK
Corp. of Japan, which specializes in electronic materials and devices, as
well as recording media. The huge orders have sped up CMC's move to expand
production overseas. The company plans to spend up to NT$7 billion on new
equipment this year. (NT$34.45 = US$1) In contrast to CMC, large Taiwanese
high-tech manufacturers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.,
Ltd. and United Microelectronics Corp., have slashed capital spending plans
for this year and next year.
CMC notes that it has begun raising funds for expansion in 2000 in sight of
the signal of revitalization of the CD-R market. Sufficient capital has
enabled the company to smoothly expand production in the second half of this
year. The company estimates it now earns at least NT$500 million a month
with its CD-R production lines running at full capacity. Hefty earnings
brought CMC cash of NT$2.2 billion in the first half year, increasing its
cash to the current NT$5 billion.
A CMC executive points out that most of the company's NT$7 billion spending
planned for this year is for procuring DVD equipment on the grounds that the
market will take off soon. A part of the spending is for expanding CD-R
production. The executive points out that behind the expansions is the
burgeoning demand of the company's customers. CMC says it has landed orders
for rewritable DVDs from big-name Japanese and American suppliers. The
company estimates its DVD-R shipments will hit one million disks this year
and triple next year. DVD-R has seven times the storage capacity of CD-R,
and its average price of US$8 to US$10 is much higher than a CD-R's US$0.24.
Up to now, CMC has set up overseas CD-R facilities in the United States,
Mexico, Britain and Hong Kong. It recently acquired a Mitsubishi Chemical
facility in Ireland and two TDK factories, one each in the United States and
Japan, boosting its CD-R output to 120 million to 130 million discs a month.
The company has moved the production lines of the two TDK factories to a
facility at Linkou, Taipei county. TDK was also a major customer to Ritek
Corp. of Taiwan, CMC's arch rival. Local insiders of the line estimate the
volume of the orders CMC has acquired is now larger than the volume of
Ritek's..."