Where have all the Ritek's gone?

[LanceSteel]

I'm a huge fan of Ritek media. I usually get the 50 or 100 pack spindles of the G03 2x media. Recently, all my old haunts either don't carry these anymore or they are backordered well into May for these disks. Did the Ritek DVD plant blow-up or something, are they only focusing on making the more expensive 4x media or am I just looking in the wrong places?

[MOVIEGEEK]

I use G04 but I think you can find G02/03 here www.allmediaoutlet.com
In February I read somewhere that Ritek was having problems keeping up with demand due to raw material shortage.

[Faustus]

Its been on again off again as far as when and how many you can get. I have a friend who recently ordered from RIMA.com so you might want to check them and see if they are in stock. I bet shop4tech has them but its because they seem to be charging move then everyone else.

[Syphic]

Ritek is planning on getting rid of all of their media and only produce 4x media by this summer. thus the shortage of G02/3. The price for this new 1-4x media is about 1.79 a piece when they are out this summer.

[Bob W]

I still have a good stock as I bought 200 of them when the price was lower than it is now. I keep hoping that prices will come down as more people buy the burners however so far thats not happening.

[disturbed1]

Here come the flames

Ritek experienced the shortage starting early this year due to miss conceptions of product demand. Prodisc is at/beyond full capacity too, but uncertian if they should expand production because of conflicting supply and demand reports.

They (Ritek) greatly over shot the demand of one type of media, which led to the shortage of DVD-R media. They overshot the demand (means made more than needed) because of companies claiming robust number projections, which didn't hit estimates.

Ritek alone shipped over 1,000,000 DVD-R discs in March, followed by Prodisc also shipping over 1,000,000 discs. CMC won't/hasn't released their numbers yet.
Princo also shipped slightly under 1,000,000 DVD-R discs. With Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation claiming approx 7-800,000.

Ritek is the current leader with ~50% market share.

Ritek converted (is converting) a CDR plant over to make DVD-R media. And is comtemplating the dropping of one DVD+R line due to lack of demand/and/or abbundant supply.

The Digital Times reports global sales of DVD-R media tipping 160 million units, 40 million units of DVD-RAM and DVD-RW each, with DVD+R and+RW accounting for 40 million units combined. These into account Q3/Q4 2002 and Q1 2003 sales and Q2 2003 projected sales.


There is no shortage of raw material, nor has the priced swayed a great deal in one way or the other. Ritek expects a 3-5% price decrease by mid summer for DVD-R media, with an increased price of CD-R media by $0.02 per unit. These are per unit prices sold to vendors, it's the vendor's choice to pass the savings on to us.

I compiled these claims from Digital Times' CEO pages, MCC investor relations, Ritek investor relations, ZDnet, and some other various fincial information sources.

[LanceSteel]

Wow disturbed1. That is the best spoken and most informative post I think I've ever seen on this website. That answers my question perfectly. Thanks to all who replied with a special thanks to MOVIEGEEK for the allmediaoutlet link. I was able to get a G03 100pack from them for a reasonable price. Thanks again everyone!