Why are Taiyo Yuden so cheap now days?

[The Stinger]

I haven't posted in a while, and sorry if this has been asked before, but I have been noticing that the Taiyo Yuden discs are a lot cheaper than they used to be. Are they the same great discs or have they gone down in reliability?

[Faustus]

Last batch I had a few months ago were just fine. Market is driving down the prices very quickly.

4x start to go away, 8x slowly becomes avalible/standard, meanwhile Dual Layer looms. It all adds up to low low prices!

[Prot]

So the 50 pack of TY offered on Newegg for $32 is a realistic price now? How is the quality of these particular dvd-r's? If quality is good, I'll have to order a couple packs.

[onewaypockets]

I have used a couple of hundred discs of the Taiyo Yuden from Rima.com

They work great...had a couple of coasters (like 3) when I was asleep at the switch and did something really lame. All others were clean burns with good compatibility with standalone players.

I also use the Taiyo CD-R product from Rima with great results for music backup.

The only other DVD-R's I use are the Maxell (Japan only!) when I see them on sale at Office Depot or Buy.com. The Taiyo and Japanese Maxell product are both the absolute best as far as I am concerned.

Don't bother with crap...not worth your time investment.

[Capmaster]

I just bought 200 TYG02 8X DVD-R from Rima for $112 8)

I love it. They're finally approaching CDs in price. I knew this day would come. Now we don't have to take out a bank loan to stock up anymore 8)

[Lobe]

well, relatively they're still about the same, at one time Ritek's were about a $1.10 each and TY's were $1.65. Without doing the math I'd guess they were and currently priced roughly 30-35% more than Ritek.

[fmctm1sw]

Yeah, they're down to appoximatly $2 each here on town. You can get a 5 pack for 1100 yen. That's down from like 1500 yen a few months ago. -R and +R, all the same...

[handyguy]

The Stinger, you didn't say what speed you are talking about.

Media prices dropping for all manf's....

TY is supposed to be putting out copy protected disks or something & that would suck.

[twinegar]

About 6 weeks ago I received 500 Ritek G04's that turned out to have a large percentage of defective discs so I switched to TYG01's from Rima. I immediately started getting call-backs on these as defective with pixelation and freezing. I even tried burning at 2X and still had problems. Some were burned from images taken directly from title sets built on that computer eliminating the possibility of defective master discs. I don't know if it is a compatibility problem with certain players or a drop in quality of the discs.
I just finished putting a movie to a TYG01 disc and was playing it back on a Pioneer DV-444 and at about the 44 minute mark it froze and pixelated for a few seconds then continued. The movie is 3 hours long and here are the encoder settings: MPEG file (MPEG-2 Video, 720x480, 29.97 fps, CBR (Constant bitrate), 2950 kbps / Dolby Digital, 48000 Hz, Stereo, 224 kbps).
I just finished burning the same title set to a Fuji TYG01 and it has the same problem so now I am wondering about the TMPGEnc 3.0 Express.
I Kprobed the TYG01 and here is the screen shot:

[onewaypockets]

Twinegar...I had the same problems. Some discs in some players would freeze. It seemed to be the worst in Panasonic stand alone players, but all would do it more or less.

I switched to Taiyo discs and this helped a bit, but the problem was still there. One day I tried a free trial of "NTI DVD Maker Platinum" just to mess around. Now everything is absolutely perfect, and discs don't freeze or skip anymore.

To be sure I really have no idea if "NTI DVD Maker..." is that special. I think rather it is a combination of my burner, this software, and the media that all comes together in a very happy arrangement.

I don't mess with a winning formula. I don't plan to change a thing. You just have to find your happy spot and stay there.

[disturbed1]

snip.........
I just finished putting a movie to a TYG01 disc and was playing it back on a Pioneer DV-444 and at about the 44 minute mark it froze and pixelated for a few seconds then continued. The movie is 3 hours long and here are the encoder settings: MPEG file (MPEG-2 Video, 720x480, 29.97 fps, CBR (Constant bitrate), 2950 kbps / Dolby Digital, 48000 Hz, Stereo, 224 kbps).
I just finished burning the same title set to a Fuji TYG01 and it has the same problem so now I am wondering about the TMPGEnc 3.0 Express.
I Kprobed the TYG01 and here is the screen shot:

The error report is beyond low. The only thing I can think of that would cause the issue(s) you have, are - DVD Burning Software, Encoding Software, Authoring software.

Not all authoring software adheres 100% to spec, while there are those picky DVD players that expect 100% compliant DVDs. If it was your encoding software, then a good DVD Authoring suite would reject it. DVD requires a few more settings besides FPS, bitrate, and resolution. GOP length can cause headaches with some players. TMPG is notorious for spiking in both bitrate, and going over the set max for GOP.

If the authoring software is to blame, same as burning software, you would have constant problems, not one problem at a single point. Things like not loading, incorrect time display, auto advancing chapters, playing fine, then starting to skip (forward/backward) frames...... are all signs of bad authoring/burning software.

Check your stream with bitrate viewer for bitrate spikes, and if you have the paid version, check the GOP structure. If you don't have the paid version, there are other tools that can read the GOP structure, like bbTools, and MPEGAN.

[twinegar]

Well.....I am embarrassed to admit it but I erred.
I did a double check on the source m2v file and found the pixelation there so I guess I wasted your time. The movie was recorded off digital cable where lately I have been getting a lot of pixelation on the incoming signal even on premium channels. I hate calling the cable company since I always get some moron that doesn't have a clue. The last guy that came out tried to tell me that I am supposed to have snow on stations like TCM and AMC which is BS.
Anyway...thanks for the input.