Who are Taiyo Yuden, why are their CDs and DVDs so expensive, and why do so many people swear by them anyway? Read on to find out.

TY are a major Japanese-based manufacturer of optical media. They started developing recordable CD technology in 1985 and had made the world’s first CD-R by 1988- so they have a lot of experience. Although TY media is quite often manufactured for other companies and sold under their brand, it’s also sold by TY themselves- either as plain TY media (normally in unbranded casing) or under the That’s brand (which is no longer sold in the UK, except as imports).

TY brand media isn’t distributed widely in the UK, which accounts for some of its high price here.

Why TY?

So- what’s the deal with TY? Put simply, their discs (CD and DVD) are made to a very high standard- they’re considered to be the best on the market by many users. On a good day, Verbatim’s media can come very close or even match their quality, but other than that no manufacturers or brands on the market meet TY’s incredibly high standards.

TY Discs from Other Sources

There are a couple of problems with buying TY-manufactured discs sold by other companies. Firstly, since these aren’t actually being sold as TY, there’s no guarantee that the manufacturer will always use TY discs for their own brand- they may use a number of sources or they may switch without warning. Experienced users look for the giveaway signs of TY media (case design, country of origin, etc.), though this may require some work and more difficult to spot via a website, since most companies won’t change the image every time there’s a minor variation on the packaging.

Also, if such discs aren’t actually being sold as TY, then there’s no guarantee that they’ll have been quality tested to the same standards as the company’s own.

Fake TY Media

The other problem is fake TY discs which aren’t actually manufactured by them, but use their DVD identifier (the ID embedded in the disc that burning software shows up). These don’t use TY dye, and it’s very unlikely that they’ll match the quality- in fact, any media using a fake code is likely to be mediocre, if not downright poor. Sometimes these discs are sold as genuine TY, other times they’re sold under another brand name.

Here at Disk Depot, we source our Taiyo Yuden CDs and DVDs from one of the UK’s largest media distributors, so we (and you!) can be sure that they’re genuine. If you buy from a more obscure source, or at a “too good to be true” price, you might not be so lucky- there are a lot of fakes out there!

Free UK Delivery

Here comes the hard sell! Buy Taiyo Yuden discs- or anything else from us- worth over £250 in total, and we’ll give you free UK delivery. No catch- you really do get free courier shipping anywhere within the United Kingdom.