RiData - what happened to them?

[akkers]

I used RiData and RiDisc dvd discs for years. Although they did not have a 100% good reputation, I found them to very reliable.

However, I cannot find them in any store for the last 8 months. Nobody is selling of the RiData, RiDisc or any Ritek variants. Have they gone out of business? Did they factories sink in last years floods?

I have tried emailing the Ritek company but I get no reply.

[hech54]

Ritek discs turned to junk when speeds went beyond 4x. I used to use them faithfully as well in my old Philips DVD recorder....but that was many years ago.

[lordsmurf]

Ridata was a consumer brand owned by Ritek worldwide.

Ridisc was a private brand owned by a UK company, unrelated to Ritek. (They did sometimes use Ritek media, however.)

Ritek media was largely lousy for all of the CD-R era, and most of the DVD-R/RW/+R/+RW era. The primary reason was Ritek's dye sucked, and there were quality control issues that led to the dumping of media on Asian markets. (It should have been destroyed, not sold for pennies.) The Asian markets improperly re-branded it and sold it back to Europe and North America, often using crappy no-name brands. For example, Ridisc. It's one reason Ritek media was unreliable unless it was part of cherry-picked lots directly sold by Ritek to specific vendors.

Old post from 2006: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/202423-An-Interview-with-Tim-Smith-Sales-and-Market...disc?p=1159376

Only when Ritek switched to Fuji oxonol dyes did it finally become decent. You find it used by other brands -- namely Sony, TDK, and store brands. Ridata is mostly found as a brand of flash drives these days.

The floods were in Thailand, not Taiwan. And it mostly affected hard drive components.

[akkers]

I still don't understand why they suddenly disappeared from the market and prices of most other black dvd discs have gone up. I used RiData 16x dvd discs for many years and never had problems playing them in any of the players, although I always burned them at 8x.

Ah well, you learn something new everyday. Move over to Verbatim.

[jman98]

There has been tremendous price pressure on disc manufacturers and most claim to be losing money. Even Verbatim has bowed to the incredible pressure to reduce prices, at least in North America, with their cheap Life series of discs which are made by lower quality manufacturers. Avoid those, but anything else by Verbatim should be fine.