Have a look at these prices for CDR's.
This is taken from a 1999 catalouge.
Hate to been pricing DVD's then.
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Have a look at these prices for CDR's.
This is taken from a 1999 catalouge.
Hate to been pricing DVD's then.
I managed to get 10 dual layer DVD's for £5.99 the other day and they were that price each just a few years ago.
CD-R's dropped in price quite quickly around 1999. I was the member of the design agency multimedia team responsible for restocking (purchasing and ordering) blank media and all other software and hardware for our department. In 2000-2001 I used to order them in boxes of 200 (in jewel cases) from a local shop and then drive down and collect them. Think it was about £50 a box, which would make the discs about 25p each.
But I remember in about 1996 needing to by a single blank CD-R for a multimedia project I was making at university and it cost me close to £10 for a single disc!
And in 2000 DVD was just starting to take off and we were one of the first agencies in the south of England to start creating and authoring video DVDs for corporate presentations. We had to use special DVD-R for authoring discs, made by Pioneer to make the discs. DVD-R most people now use in their homes are DVD-R for General use which are different. DVD-R for authoring discs are a lot more compatible with all players compared to DVD-R for general use, but are more expensive. But they can be sent off directly to a duplicator if quite a few copies are needed, whereas general use DVD-R cannot.
Anyway, I remember the external SCSI Pioneer DVR-S201 Authoring DVD Writer we purchased cost over £2000 at the time. Mad thinking about it now, considering that less than 8 years later you can now buy a 20x NEC DVD-RW for under £10.
And the blank Authoring DVD-Rs at the time cost about £40 each! But they were/are a lot higher quality than any DVD-R's for general use that we use these days. I still have a few projects on some of the Pioneer DVD-Rs from 2000/01 and they still work perfectly.
I can't say the same about every DVD-R I've burnt more recently using cheap General use DVD-Rs, with some of the older ones now causing CRC and cyclic redundancy errors. But that has now stopped me buying cheap discs and just buying Verbatim discs and I've not had any errors so far with those. Bit more expensive, but you do get what you pay for.
Same is true of CD-Rs these days though. The earlier CD-Rs from the late 90's and early 2000's seem much higher quality than most you can buy these days. I've still got tons of discs from Sony and TDK and they all work perfectly. Some with music on, others with data, project backups etc. Whereas I often go to use a more recent disc and sometimes they can't be read.
That was quite expensive for 1999.