YAMAHA DISCONTINUES CD-RW RECORDER PRODUCT LINE

[Tall Texan]

at least yamaha is here to put information in, i admire that

I would have to agree. Thanks for taking the time to read and discuess the issue with us. my first burner was yamaha 1x and my roommate just got a F1 drive. i have had others and installed mor then a can count for my customers over the years. i really hate to see you go. at least you went out with a nice drive the F1. Thanks for everything and good luck to you and everyone at yamaha.

[maxrulez]

The writing quality of the newer drives are crap, and being 99% of the are litenon based put two and two together. Ive a,ready had over 30 cd fail written with a "Lite-on" based drive. I still have cds written with my Yamaha and plextor drives from 10 years ago that are still good.

[hoxlund]

well the people that are using these lite-on drives are morons, and can't work em

a little side note, i finished getting Windows XP 8in1

[LoneWolf]

at least yamaha is here to put information in, i admire that

yamaha you do make other great products, just not burners, IN MY OPINION

I have been in the computer business for eight years now...first building them, then as a systems administrator, systems engineer, now sysadmin again. That involves choosing products for others in addition to myself, for best performance and long-term reliability.

I have to say without a doubt that Yamaha has made THE most reliable CD-RW drives on the market over that time. There are others that make okay drives, mind you...The Lite-On models you speak of aren't bad, but for long-term usage they don't hold up as well, and like most other manufacturers, even high quality ones (such as Plextor, the only brand that comes near Yamaha, but costs you more for less drive) they don't have the recording buffer size that Yamaha drives have, a massive 8MB buffer on the current top-line CRW-F1, when most burners by other manufacturers have half that, and cheapie generics have less yet. Plenty of drives don't have Mt. Rainier support yet which lets you use the CD-RW as an instant-access drive for backing up files, without packet-writing software...Yamaha's CRW-F1 does.

Yamaha has also been willing to continue making SCSI drives for those of us who don't want an all IDE system, and up until recently, the only IDE in my system was the hard disk (sadly, SCSI seems to be on the way out, and I am now slowly converting).
I have owned a Yamaha 4x4x16, an 8x4x24, and now the 44x22x44 CRW-F1. It's too bad Yamaha is quitting the R/RW business, because they earned my respect and business a long time ago.

P.S. Just because an OEM places a part in their system doesn't mean it's as reliable as they get. I have seen plenty of parts in Compaq and other brands of systems (was an authorized servicer at one time) that weren't the most reliable. It's a balance of how long a part will last and what kind of deal they make with the vendor in order to get that part cheaply and in sufficient quantity. I won't say Lite-On is bad...they aren't. They just aren't Yamaha.

[hoxlund]

im done

[Han]

My friend's first writer, for which I contributed one third 5 years ago, still is Yamaha 2x SCSI. We never had a single problem with it, partially of the excellent SCSI setup and because of the bundled WinOnCD application, which was simply the best burning program at the beginning.

I'd like to thank Yamaha for a wonderful experience!

[maxrulez]

HAHA That was a great "Everyone that uses lite-on drives are morons". OK Mr. Best Buy salesman appreciate your extremely mature and accurate judgment...

[hoxlund]

sorry don't work there anymore, and if lite-on's weren't such great writers, why would alienware use them in there systems? and why would almost 10 different companies re-badge them and use them as there own products?

[Halc]

hoxlund,

the CDR-INfo Writing Quality article clearly shows the superior writing quality of Yamaha CRW3200 over the best of LiteOn.

This cannot be disputed. You may 'think' LiteOn is better quality, but the objective tests prove otherwise.

The fact that you and many others are content with LiteOn drives does not mean that they do not produce inferior writing quality. They do.

LiteOn is 'good enough' for many, but not to all.

In a real capitalist market, we would have the freedom to choose higher quality and more expensive writers OR to choose the lesser quality and cheaper goods.

Now we are quickly heading towards the future of having only cheaper and less good to choose from.

As to why everybody is OEMin from LiteOn part: because that's how corporates work. They stop doing the less profitable things and sub-contract them to some smaller companies in order to raise their own profit margins.

CDR drives have become a commodity. There is no business in them, unless you make 10x the amount of your nearest competitor or you make a special niche market version.

That is why everybody let's LiteOn do the cheap work and then these other companies OEM from LiteOn.

And in the future there will be two or three big OEM companies to choose from and there will be even greater pressure to cut costs and make lesser quality here and there and hope it doesn't matter.

This is exactly what has happened in many similar fields of production (mobile phones being one). Design, production and branding are becoming separate. And the quality is becoming worse all the time.

Great for those who like to live in a 12 month throw-away-cycle society.

Bad for those who like to own and use quality equipment upon which they can rely and which they use as tools to archive important information (and not just copy the latest audio and game cds).

This is the reason I'm sad to see Yamaha go and I'm afraid Plextor will be the next to make the exit.

Pretty soon will have only LiteOn and a couple of other competing for the title of 'make the cheapest, sell the most, obsolete the quickest' title.

I'm of the age that I still remember when we had good Philips and Yamaha archival quality recorders. Sure, these babies cost several thousand dollars, but discs burned with them (with proper selection of media and archival conditions) are still very usable today more than 10 years later.

Based on the quality of discs and writers people use today, I wouldn't bet my money on that data surviving the next ten years.

It may not be important for the GTA 4 Extreme Violence backup copy, but it sure is important in many professional activities.

regards,
Halc

[glock20rocks]

Just my $0.02: In my experince, the Lite-On's do have pretty bad write quailty. I have vvery old discs burned in a Plex 8x20 that read perfectly, and brand new TY discs from a Lite-On that will only read in said Lite-On drive; they can't even be read by a Lite-On DVD drive! I for one will never, ever buy a Lite-On again. I'm 100% Plextor (at least for CD burners...DVD, I'm undecided).

[hoxlund]

im done

[Han]

Abit IT7-MAX2 V2.0 Mobo (Intel 845PE Chipset), AMD +1800 XP

I'm just wondering, how did you manage to put AMD Athlon into Intel P4 motherboard?!

[maxrulez]

HEHE 10other compaines use them because they can buy the durn things for lite-on for $5 each instead of buying a higher quality drive for say $20 each core or something. Yeah, BTW it would be a cold day in hell beofre Intel made a chipset for amd.

[glock20rocks]

maxrulez is right...10 other companies use 'em because they're cheap...in more ways than one.

[hoxlund]

ok, now you guys have me looking at the CRW-F1, it won't replace my Lite-On LTR-48125W but ill be putting it in my server

i read that it doesn't do EFM encoding, which is what CloneCD, ClonyXXL is mainly based off

if alone i use it to T@2 the serial keys on my cds, it would save me tons of Brother Computer Labeling, what im trying to ask is, if you were to burn like a cd key on the bottom of the unused disk, would it be easy to read on Memorex-TY-48x's?

[cfitz]

ok, now you guys have me looking at the CRW-F1, it won't replace my Lite-On LTR-48125W but ill be putting it in my server

I thought you already had all the answers:

screw yamaha

Lite-On's beat out yamaha, plextor any day

yamaha you do make other great products, just not burners

cfitz

[dodecahedron]

@Halc,
nicely put.

[CowboySlim]

Oh-oh,

I just put that new Memorex 52x/24x/52x rebadged Lite-On in machine. It was to replace the Yamaha CRW3200Z that's going into my daughter's machine. Hmmmmmmmmmm.................

Slim

[gnf.pt]

Hi,

my first post was to say that it seemed to be a decision afecting Yamaha Europa but I found this:

Yamaha to Withdraw From CD-R/RW Business



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Tokyo, February 5, 2003 – Yamaha Corp. decided at a board meeting to cease sales of CD-R/RWs for personal computers and to withdraw completely from the business by the end of March 2003. Since Yamaha entered the CD-R/RW market in April 1994 its products have consistently led the industry in drive speeds and won recognition for their high performance and quality.

However, amidst high competition and rapidly falling sales prices, the middle and high-end products market, which Yamaha had been targeting, has shrunk dramatically. Additionally, the market has seen DVD-compatible devices and personal computers with installed CD-R/RW drives become the norm.

In light of this situation the Company had been working to leverage high sound quality technology and installation of direct print-in drive technology to maintain competitiveness. Yet under the current market conditions the Company deemed that it would be imprudent to continue operations and to make further investments.

Yamaha has therefore decided to cease sales of CD-R/RWs, to strengthen existing businesses such as home theaters, and to develop new businesses using technology the Company has acquired over the years. Yamaha will maintain its after-sales support services for users and clients who have already purchased its CD-R/RW products.




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1. Nature of the Decision
Withdrawal from PC CD-R/RW operation

2. Time of Withdrawal
The end of March 2003

3. Current Sales
Approximately 7.2 billion yen (forecast for the end of March 2003)
4. Affected Amount
(Losses) 1 billion yen resulting from withdrawal

5. Influence on employment
(Japan) Shifting into fast growing new business areas.
(Overseas) Minimal adjustments will be made to the number of employees.

6. Upcoming AV/IT operation deployment
The Company will expand its visual products business by promoting popular home theater products, the market for which has grown in recent years. Increased focus on digitization and networking including broadband compatibility by using technology accumulated from AV and IT business.
The Company will target Japan, US and Europe, followed by China, where Yamaha will begin full-scale operations from March. The Company will continue to deploy and market its original high added-value products.






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For more information, please contact:


YAMAHA CORPORATION
Corporate Communications Group,
Public Relations Division
2-17-11 Takanawa, Minato-ku,
Tokyo 108-8568
TEL +81-3-5488-6601
FAX +81-3-5488-5060


Visit Yamaha's website at http://www.global.yamaha.com/index.html

I recently bought a Yamaha F1 (external USB unit) and I believe it rules.
Too bad!

[hoxlund]

well nothing is final on the CRW-F1 until i build my new system, that comes first

but you have to admit the yamaha's can't do as good as job as the lite-ons, when it comes to cd protection copying

[gnf.pt]

https://www2.yamaha.co.jp/info/comments.html

Even though I believe this is of no use, people that believe that they should at least continue to market their unit can post a comment on their web site using the above link.

My opinion when I bought the F1 unit was that this was going to be their last unit ( I don't think there is the need to push the speed up to 48 or 52x and spend money on research to keep quality high).
I didn't expect, though, that Yamaha would stop marketing the unit and withdraw from their CD-RW operation. Not after developing a new chip (YDC132-V) to control the drive, pushing the features envelope with the new technological achievement of DiscT@2 and so on.

This is most unexpected. More if they will not target the DVD-+RW after these withdraw.

I must say that this my best drive ever. It has 8 MB of buffer even though it has a Buffer under run protection scheme. It does DAE perfectly.
It was kind of expensive but it was worth every EUR paid.

[stix]

Hello Yamaha if you are listening. Very sorry to hear you are exiting. I recently bought and installed an F1 and am very pleased with it. I have been wanting a Yamaha CDR/RW drive for years. happy to finally have one.

will you continue to provide firmware upgrades?

can you give us the best link for keeping current on upgrades?

How about getting the company to reconsider?

[Ian]

will you continue to provide firmware upgrades?

I asked Mark the same question. Here's what he said:

"Yamaha is commited to ensuring that our customers receive the support they deserve. Our engineers will continue to monitor the products, and issue firmware updates when necessary."

[Tall Texan]

Thats good to know. A question for all of you who have an F1 what is the best media to use for the tattooing. Thanks in advance for any help

[stix]

thanks Ian. that's some good news indeed. I wish we could talk them out of leaving the market. It's nuts. They build this Dream machine and then decide to quit.