Victor Advanced Media Co., Ltd. has announced plans to close their business entirely, including all of their affiliates. This includes their sales subsidiaries, JVC Advanced Media USA Inc., JVC Advanced Media Europe GmbH, and JVC Advanced Media (Tianjin) Ltd. of Taiwan. The parent company of all these organizations is Taiyo Yuden Co., Ltd. of Japan. Effective date of the closure is December, 2015.
Here is their reason for closing the business:
Victor Advanced Media has developed businesses centered on optical recording media. As the larger storage capacity of hard disc drives (HDDs) and the use of cloud computing is driving changing market conditions, the market for optical media products has been diminishing. Due to the decline in demand in recent years and market outlook it has become increasingly difficult to expect improvement in the future business environment.
This is a serious blow to all those who still use optical media. Taiyo Yuden recordable discs have been some of the most consistently reliable discs ever made, and some would argue that they are the best still left in the current market, but not for very much longer.
I for one have used nothing but Taiyo Yuden CD's for the last 12 years at least. And their 8x DVD +R discs have been my favorites for long term storage. These discs have been the gold standard for so long, its hard to imagine a future for DVD and CD recordable discs without them. I can still remember scrounging the local stores when Taiyo Yuden DVD's became harder to find without shopping on the internet, and triumphantly buying up the last few cake boxes of Sony TY that I came across. Soon, those who still rely on optical discs may be doing the same at online shops, only this time, it will be a final chapter for the very well respected Taiyo Yuden optical discs.
Many thanks to jadburner for bringing this news to our attention and providing a link to the announcement. You can read that announcement here. Be aware that it is a .pdf document.
