XPost: aus.computers, alt.os.linux.debian
From: nospam@needed.invalid
On Tue, 8/19/2025 7:31 AM, Felix wrote:
> Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>> In alt.os.linux.debian Felix wrote:
>> Not really, "Shintaro". Seems Big W etc. still sell things from that
>> brand, but not familiar to me.
>
> They made optical media, as I recall
The "branding" on optical media, does not match "who made it".
Maxell and Fujitsu were "Ritek". And presumably, a specific tag
from whatever the Ritek catalog contained.
Philips (a brand name presumably bought by the real seller) uses
CMC media.
Ritek didn't even put discs in cake boxes. The blanks existed
just as blanks.
Then, others, a packaging house perhaps, would put 50 blanks in a
plastic cylinder and slap a paper label on with some fake branding
info, such as Maxell or Fujitsu. The customer would remember
"Maxell and Fujitsu are using Ritek, that makes them safe for me to buy".
When Staples started selling Staples-brand media, we didn't
have a clue where that media was coming from -- consequently
we could not buy those.
In the odd case, Verbatim actually owns a plant that makes blanks,
and that is a more recent situation. It's possible Verbatim bought
a part of M-DISC. Otherwise, Verbatim was a re-packager as well,
and had pretty good curation. You could count on "Verbatim 12345
is Ritek" for example. The Verbatim part numbers were five digits,
and the consistency could be good (12345 was always Ritek).
Verbatim also bought one of the jewel box companies. It was
funny to find Verbatim branding on the package of 50 jewel boxes,
and the design of the package, the color assortment of the jewel
boxes, was exactly the same as one of its competitors from years ago.
Some others of the "making blanks but not putting in cake box" crowd,
they amalgamated. Two of the companies collapsed their staff and
work under one corporate banner. But in the fullness of time,
that operation will shut down as well.
Tao Yuden exited years ago, and might have been an early leaver.
Then made some good media, but the distribution chain was spotty
and I could never get those here in a shop.
The end result of the shutdown of the optical media industry,
is to me it looks like you won't be able to get rewriteable
media forever. But you'll be able to get write-once media
for a while longer.
The best burns, come from the optical drive recognizing the
tag on the media, and adjusting the laser according to the tag info.
The laser has programmable power level, and uses a different
level of energy for erase, read, write. Sometimes counterfeit
media would be produced by shady companies, who would copy
the Ritek tag and fit it unto their own blanks. You can see
how such a situation would be ripe for abuse.
But when you think about it, the whole industry was shady.
This layered model of distribution, only existed to help
the companies that made the shitty chemically-unstable media.
That's how Memorex (presumably a trade name bought from someone)
could sell some terrible media to me. One of the discs in the
box was completely transparent (see right through it) after
only three months. And it was not like the discs were
in direct sunlight or left on the seat of my car. I'd check
the tag on the media, and name and shame who really made it,
but if the discs are transparent, the tag is gone :-/
Conclusion: "Shintaro" is the Japanese word meaning "Staples" :-)
Just the usual re-branding exercise and putting blanks
into cylinders as a hobby. The customer then, is left
holding the bag ("who made this no-name granola?"). We
used to have big bags of granola, whose origins were unknown.
Paul
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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