arsclist More on Kodak CDRs

[David Seubert <seubert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I made a few phone calls and found out the following about Kodak CDRs. 
Kodak is completely out of the business, and their website is incorrect 
when it says that they do custom orders of Gold CDRs. They co-owned their 
CDR manufacturing plants with PDSC (Panasonic Disc Services Corporation), 
but they sold their 49% share back to Panasonic earlier this year.

I talked to PDSC this morning and they no longer make any blank CDR media 
at the two Kodak factories and have switched over to DVD production. 
Furthermore, I asked both Kodak and PDSC if anybody had licensed their 
technology and was manufacturing "Kodak" media under a different name. 
Neither were aware of any licensing arrangement.

Below is an article Kodak emailed me about the transition.

David Seubert
UCSB

-----------------------
Subject: Discontinuance of the CD-R Product Line
To: seubert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: timothy.matthews@xxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 13:34:46 -0500
X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on KNOTES2/ISBP/EKC(Release 5.0.8 |June 
18, 2001) at 03/28/2002
01:34:47 PM
X-Virus-Scanned: Passed

From: Tim Matthews

Case ID # 2519320

Kodak Quits CD-R Business

Sells Interest in Plants to PDSC
by Terence P. Keegan, Medialinenews Jan 2002.

(Jan. 30, 2002) Rochester, NY-Eastman Kodak Co., one of the original
suppliers of consumer and professional CD-R and CD-RW discs, discontinued
its blank product lines at the close of last year, as a result of CD-R's
degeneration to a commodity product.

The recordable imaging technology pioneer also sold its 49 percent stake in
Matsushita Manufacturing LLC of America to its partner Panasonic Disc
Services Corp., which had owned the remaining 51 percent. The joint venture
was formed in December 1999, essentially consisting of Kodak's two plants
in Guadalajara, Mexico and Youghal, Ireland. Throughout the life of the
joint venture, the plants replicated DVD, CD-R and -RW, and applications of
Kodak's part-prerecorded, part-recordable Programmable CD-ROM (CD-PROM)
technology, which lay at the core of its Picture CDs.

A PDSC spokesman stated the replicator would now expand Matsushita Media
Manufacturing's DVD production operations, including the conversion of some
of the plants' existing CD-R manufacturing lines. A spokesman for Kodak
commented that the decision was "difficult for us to make, but it was
prompted by financial performance. The commodity CD-R business did not meet
Kodak's financial expectations, and the market shows little sign of
improving in the future." The spokesman noted that Kodak's exit from the
CD-R business has no effect on its Photo CD/Picture CD business, other
CD-PROM applications, or R&D initiatives in optical media. He declined to
reveal Kodak's supply arrangements for Photo CD, Picture CD and CD-PROM
moving forward from the joint ventures dissolution, only stating that the
supply would continue to be steady.

Copyright © 2001 United Entertainment Media, Inc.



David Seubert, Curator
Performing Arts Collection
Davidson Library Special Collections
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA  93106
(805) 893-5444 Fax (805) 893-5749
mailto:seubert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/pa/

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