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Now I got a question that is (probably) less clever to you and that goes like this.

I wonder what the short handle CMC stands for.

Since the letters MCC stands for Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation, what does CMC mean?

Their website shows a recursive acronym: CMC Magnetics Corporation. They're more commonly known as Crap Media Company.

G

It's China Magnetics Corp isn't it?

I think MediumRare got it right though, lol.

I always thought it was Can't Make CDs

jase wrote:It's China Magnetics Corp isn't it?

I think MediumRare got it right though, lol.

It's a Taiwan company.

Anyway, I don't think CMC can't make good quality CD and DVD media and surely there's no serious competition from either side of the Atlantic.

Consumers and companies in Europe and Americas have bought media from CMC and that's why you are familiar with the name.

I know CMC is Taiwanese.

It's just that I remember reading either a Philips or Mitsubishi press release some time ago that referred to "China Magnetic Corp, based in Taipei, Taiwan" or words to that effect. Not sure why -- although I have come across Taiwanese firms referring to China in their name before (I have absolutely no idea why).

Yes, CMC produce some good discs, some very good DVDR media in fact. But when they're bad, they're very very bad

And of course, CMC have a factory in Ireland -- and they have offices in Newcastle, not far from here as well.

That factorry in Ireland was taken over from Mitsubishi and they still produce media for Mitsubishi over there.
Now CMC is improving there quality. While in the old days(cyanine cd-r) they only had crappy products newer products are improving.
I am not saying that CMC is a good manufacturer these days still they have improved much in quality, but they also have a long road ahead.
About CMC DVD media measurements of unburned Memorex and verbatim media indicated that the media is quite good manufactured.
Better as Ricoh & Ritek media.
However when it comes to the quality after burning the quality it performs a lot worse on most drives compared to the ricoh media. It's because CMC still has a very bad name when it comes to media and most drive manufacturers will not spend much time on supporting CMC media.
Today more and more it looks like it doesn't matter how good you can manufacture dvd recordables it matters much how good is your media supported. For this reason one should avoid media from smaller factory's and one should go for the big names as TY , MCC.

If CMC really wants to play along with TY, MCC then they should everything to get there media a lot better supported and keep the production quality at the same level as the disc's I encountered so far.

The Memorex and MCC media burn quit good on my Pioneer a06, but on my friends Lite On's the same batch is hit and miss.

Well CMC did start from very humble beginnings -- they made audio and video tapes in the 70s and 80s and their quality was considered at that time to be very little better than the extremely poor quality Hong Kong-produced media you used to get in markets and the like. They were notorious -- a major retail chain in the UK bought in these tapes and had them branded with the house name, and on several occasions entire truckloads of them had to be "disposed of" to low-grade distributors due to the sub-standard quality (on one occasion a box of a couple of hundred audio cassettes were found to have the leaders not linked to the main tape so none of them would play). In the end the chain gave up and gave the contract to SKC, who were more expensive. (SKC you'll remember used to make almost all of Memorex's tapes in the 80s).

I think this, coupled with the less than stellar early reputation of the CDR media, has caused many companies to ignore their presence to a large extent. As you say RJW they have some work to do to bring their reputation up to speed.

MediumRare wrote:They're more commonly known as Crap Media Company.

dolphinius_rex wrote:I always thought it was Can't Make CDs

Or, Cheap Media Crap.

Despite all that, I've certainly seen some good CDs made by CMC. They weren't as good TY, but they were just fine.

Remember guys:

Taiwan is known as the "Republic of China" or R.o.C.

Mainland China is known as the "People's Republic of China" or P.R.o.C.

I have seen good cd-r's and dvd recordables by CMC still first ones are most times exceptions.
For DVD's there all over the market just like Ritek from good manufacturerd to terrible manufactured which never ever should have left the factory (First generation DVD-R for example !)
Still the DVD's have shown a progress now that MCC is helping them with the manfacturing process. Still like I said befor don't expect a B-companny to become a excellent manufacter in a day or 2. Still they have shown potential on some levels that they are willing to improve these days,(Specially cd-rw and DVD+/-R(W). So we wlll see how this ends over time.
At this moment I put them in the class of limited ussable products which is better as most Hong Kong stuff.

Remember guys:

Taiwan is known as the "Republic of China" or R.o.C.

Mainland China is known as the "People's Republic of China" or P.R.o.C.

I do remember, quite well, actually. It's Formosa.

Slim
Who is older than, but not as smart as he looks.

I had a good CMC disc once. Now where did I put that thing?

CowboySlim wrote:

Remember guys:

Taiwan is known as the "Republic of China" or R.o.C.

Mainland China is known as the "People's Republic of China" or P.R.o.C.

I do remember, quite well, actually. It's Formosa.

Slim
Who is older than, but not as smart as he looks.

The island that Taiwan is on is called Formosa. The actual country name is as ozcddvdburn said.

Communist Made CD-R's
Cheaply Made Crap
Corrupt My Code
Create Major Chaos
Crash My Computer

jase wrote:In the end the chain gave up and gave the contract to SKC, who were more expensive. (SKC you'll remember used to make almost all of Memorex's tapes in the 80s).

And who can forget those Memorex db tapes with the yellow reels? They sold zillions of them in the USA.

Is SKC still around? They tried making a spash in America back in the 80's with thier blank tapes - you could pick up a SKC C-90 normal bias tape for 75 cents each at some record stores like Musicland, high bias for 1.50. Good quality tape, but not as good as Maxell or TDK's best. They also had a line of VHS video tape too. I bought a bunch of them for taping off the radio and albums. I think SKC also made most of Scotch (now Imation) cassettes atfer they shut down thier USA plants (thier "highlander" tapes were garbage). Does SKC make thier own CD-R's or use other sources?

SKC became notorious when they got into CD manufacturing in the 80's. They pressed up some of the earliest bootleg CD's because the major record companies had built or were building thier own plants.

SKC is makeing DVD-R and CD-R these days.
CD-R's are over in the quality range from bad to okay
for
DVD-R you should avoid SKC media at least at this moment !
Low support by drive manufacturers and not so good manufactureing quality.

LOl I used to hate CMC discs as well the last time but their quality has certainly improved over these years after Mitsui and Kodak had quit the cdr business.Very soon Taiyo Yuden will too also because from what I see because companies which concentrate on high quality cdr media aren't getting much profit margins these days.It's companies which mass produced them and throwing them around which are instead.
For companies like CMC and RiTEK to produce premium/high quality medias is no problem since are oem manufacturers for many companies today but the demand is still on the value side.People usually buy economical cdrs in bulk not the premium ones.If you've the chance to get your hands on the new CMC multispeed cdrs,you'll notice that it has improved quite a bit.The write startegy grading has improved from once B- to A+ .That's quite an improvement.

Your forgetting something here TY can focus on quality media.
They got the quality name themselves and have made some good deals with third parties.
However the most interresting is that allmost all factories (princo NOT) pay royalties to TY for production of cd-r's. This is were TY is getting there big money from not from the few disc's they make !

The write startegy grading has improved from once B- to A+ .That's quite an improvement.

Write strategy gradeing says nothing about real quality !

RJW wrote:Your forgetting something here TY can focus on quality media.
They got the quality name themselves and have made some good deals with third parties.
However the most interresting is that allmost all factories (princo NOT) pay royalties to TY for production of cd-r's. This is were TY is getting there big money from not from the few disc's they make !

I know they were the ones which pionered the cdrs and have the rights to it but if you notice today the TYs are getting rare these days.Even in China,Malaysia,Singapore,Taiwan and Japan TYs are hard to find.Yes I stated Japan as well because most of their computer shops stocks Maxell and MCmedia nowadays.HP has sourced their cdrs to CMC,Fuji has turned to Prodisc and Sony has started to make their own cdrs.It's a matter of time the TY brandname will only be remembered as the inventors of CDRs when they exit the business just like Kodak and Mitsui.As you've said they will probably still make money with their cdr technology maybe they will concentrate on other things instead.

Mitsui is *VERY* much not gone... just different. I've personally sold over 20,000 Mitsui CD-Rs in the last 40 days, and that's only to my local Greater Vancouver based customers!

dolphinius_rex wrote:Mitsui is *VERY* much not gone... just different. I've personally sold over 20,000 Mitsui CD-Rs in the last 40 days, and that's only to my local Greater Vancouver based customers!

Yeah MAME is not the same as Mitsui Toatsu.

I just wish Mitsui would sell CD-R's at the major superstores, or make them for a major rebadging company like Memorex, Imation, etc.

The few I have seen in my area have been expensive. $25.00 for a Mitsui 50 pack without rebate at my local PC dealer - not a good deal when TY-made Fujifilms are at Best Buy for 7-to-5.99 after rebate every couple of months.

Centrilium wrote:
I know they were the ones which pionered the cdrs and have the rights to it but if you notice today the TYs are getting rare these days.Even in China,Malaysia,Singapore,Taiwan and Japan TYs are hard to find.Yes I stated Japan as well because most of their computer shops stocks Maxell and MCmedia nowadays.HP has sourced their cdrs to CMC,Fuji has turned to Prodisc and Sony has started to make their own cdrs.It's a matter of time the TY brandname will only be remembered as the inventors of CDRs when they exit the business just like Kodak and Mitsui.As you've said they will probably still make money with their cdr technology maybe they will concentrate on other things instead.

Why most companies might have gone for a different manufacturer for cd-r's they did buy there media from TY mostly even if they can make it themselves. Also TY still sells a lot directly to studio's it is surprising how much there used in Europe.
Because of the very high demand on DVD media by these companies these companies would have to pay extra for cd-r's. TY makes there products on production lines used for both and doesn't want to build another factory. So by makeing more and more DVD's cd-r's will become harder and harder to find because there more expensive. Still some companies don't care and just want the best (Plextor/ a lot of production studio's. ) and are still ordering a lot of cd-r media and have contracts for multiple years.