Yamaha stops producing CD-R drivers

[Wombat]

http://www.global.yamaha.com/news/20030205.html

[SteveC]

Shame - I've had a couple Yamaha's and rate them highly.

[Pace]

Ah, drives Also a bit sad to see, guess their tattoo idea didn't take off that much. Yamaha I think tended to be too much of a specialist CD-R company of recent - optical drives are in price freefall - not a Yamaha thing I suppose.

[William]

Look at it from a Yamaha perspective -if they keep price competitive by becoming more cheap/cheerful a la LiteOn; they risk this reputation being carried on to their other product lines. Which from their perspective would not be good. LiteOn are not selling their drives at a huge profit either; and they already have relationships with their major customers. Trying to break into that would be a waste of money IMO.

[agallag]

D'oh. I have a 4x SCSI yamaha, and a 20x10x40 IDE in my current system. I also have an external USB2 44x24x44 on backorder at work. I hope it makes it in before the end of march

[KvHagedorn]

I had a Yamaha.. it broke. Replaced it with a Plextor and It's been smooth sailing since. It's a prudent move for them.. Yamaha has a reputation for quality throughout their product lines, but the CD line just wasn't living up to that. Given the cutthroat competition and general cheapening of quality throughout the industry as a result, I don't blame them.

[Gurm]

Ahem. Yeah.

I love things by Yamaha... except their CD burners. I've had several. All have broken.

My liteon (1/3 the price of a Yammy) has burned easily 2000 cd's.

Still going strong.

(Knock wood.)

- Gurm

[Fogel]

I still use my 4-5 years old Yamaha 6x4x16 SCSI CD burner. It will probably be replace by a cheap Lite-On IDE burner soon.

[GT98]

Lite-on kick ass for CD-burners.....Plextor makes good stuff to, but mostly paying for the name

[Kurt]

Originally posted by William
Look at it from a Yamaha perspective -if they keep price competitive by becoming more cheap/cheerful a la LiteOn; they risk this reputation being carried on to their other product lines. Which from their perspective would not be good. LiteOn are not selling their drives at a huge profit either; and they already have relationships with their major customers. Trying to break into that would be a waste of money IMO.

look at plextor: they're still selling fine even if they are 50-100% more expensive...they face strong competition from liteon though...I stopped using plextors a while ago though (when liteon released their 24x cdrw I think)...

[William]

Plextor are not exactly what you'd call OK. They returned to the SCSI market because they couldn't make money on their IDE drives. Sanyo are apparentley more expensive than mediatek. Plextor are living on their name though; they are not doing to keep their name what they did to get it (may change with the return to the SCSI market, but doubtul to my way of thinking, it smacks of poor management)

[thop]

Lite-On are excellent for the price. Still i wouldnt trade my plextors for one of them

[Gurm]

I would. Lite-on is 1/3 the price of Plextor. I can buy 2 drives, and have a spare... and be able to beat more copy protections. That's my issue really - Plextor is good, no question. But Lite-on rips better, burns better, and beats more protections than any other drive.

- Gurm

[MultimediaMan]

I'm with Gurm... Lite-ons are awfully hard to beat for the money. Plextor does not offer anything more than the Lite-
ons.

Yamaha never got the picture that the CD-R market is pretty entrenched in terms of how many systems come integrated with them...they relied on their "name" rather than innovating or improving their product. Yeah sure, it was nice to be able to make pretty designs on the discs, but who really cares when archiving?

Right now, the Floppy drive is flat out being replaced by the CD-RW and Flash Media Technologies. Yamaha was still cranking out burners at a higher price point than Plextor. Somebody saw the light before they starting losing even more money.

FWIW, my "Wal-Mart Special" LGE 16xDVD-ROM, and LGE 32x12x48CD-RW drive have conquered all copy protections ~and crappy OEM Disks~ I have encountered to date - my LGE 12x8x8 CD-RW/DVD-ROM isn't quite as reliable reading SafeDisc2, but the 32x12x16x CD-RW/DVD-ROM has been 100% reliable reading copy protected CDs - I don't rip for the hell of it: I burn ALL of my new software and put the originals in cold storage, as I have two small children that occasionally get into the my home office to play with my "Kumpuuter CeeDees" while I am at work. I learned my lesson two years ago when I caught my 3 year old daughter flinging around a Customer's Retail Win2K Server CD. Fortunately, the scratches were repairable: a Local Movie Rental/Game Exchange place was able to put in in their disc restorer and it cleaned up as good as new.

[thop]

Originally posted by Gurm
Lite-on is 1/3 the price of Plextor.

What planet are you from, Gurm? Liteon 48x goes for 66€ here, Plextor 48x for 100€.

Anyway i don't copy games, so i don't care if Lite-On beats the newest Safedisc version and whatnot. And on the very rare occasion that i stumble upon a copy protected audio cd i still got my UltraPlex

I bought my Plextor 24x when it was (in my eyes) the best writer available. Also Plextor was the only company that gave two years warranty on their drives before it became mandatory in germany.

I'd probably go for a Lite-On if i had to buy a writer today.