CD Duplication – A Potted History Of How The Service Developed

By: Jeremy Teal Click author's name for more of his/her articles

I remember the excitement when, back in 1997, I purchased a CDR burner (a Yamaha CDR400) and embarked on a path that has determined and dominated my life ever since. In those days I was a studio engineer and if a band wanted to take away the latest mix to hear at home or in the car I would have record it to cassette. It was always disappointing to hear the pristine, punchy mix I had slaved over come back over the monitors sounding hissy, wobbly and generally dull. The purchase of an affordable CD burner meant I could start giving a CD away instead and it proved to be a winner. Suddenly my mixes sounded like they did coming off the mixing desk. I could confidently hand over the CDR and know what the recipient would hear. Although due to the cost of blank CDR this is not something that happened that often! The burner I had was pretty advanced for it's day (it was Yamaha's second generation CD burner) and could write discs at 4 times the read speed of a CD (4X). At that time I'd started getting involved with a small firm that offered cassette duplication for major record labels in London. I suggested the idea of offering CDR copies instead of cassettes and very soon 10th Planet (as the company was known) became the first company to offer CD duplication to the music industry in the UK. This was in 1998; the cost of a CDR dupe was prohibitive and the print options were basic, but the service still proved popular. I later went on to become Managing Director of the company that 10th Planet mutated into, but that's a whole different story.

CDR development progressed over the next few years and the cost of discs dropped inversely to the speed of burning. Pretty soon a blank CDR that o a few $ or more was costing less than 50 cents and the orders for promo CDs started ramping up. By then a few other audio duplication companies had followed where 10th Planet had led and a whole new industry was developing.
Fast forward a couple of years to early 2001 and another revolution was in progress. This time it was the arrival of Pioneer's DVR-S201 - the world's first DVD burner. At the time it retailed for over USD $3500 and wrote discs at a blistering 1 X read speed. Yes that is correct, one speed writing - if you had a full disc it would take roughly 1 hour to write. And did I mention that it was only compatible with the DVDR for authoring media that cost about $15 per disc. At the time we had the only DVDR tower in Soho, London's film and TV district. It had 4 burners and cost over $20,000. If a client ordered a run of 50 DVDs (something that did not happen very often at the price we had to sell them at!) it meant an all night duplication party. Printing was limited too as there were no inkjet surfaces available for the blank media.

Over the following year we were hearing rumours of a new version of the format (called DVDR General Purpose) that would be more affordable and would improve the write speeds and reliability. In 2001 the drives started appearing and by 2002 they were affordable enough that multiple drives could be configured in a tower to make the DVD duplication process more efficient. Drives were still SCSI and expensive by today's standards but a fraction the price of the authoring burners. Media too started selling in quantities and as a result the cost of a blank DVDR dropped significantly to a point where by 2007/2008 the cost difference between a blank CDR and DVDR was a few pence. As a result of this activity a huge market has developed for DVD duplication. The company I am now responsible for duplicate and print over a million recordable DVD a year and when I think back to those all night sessions to turn around a 50 job I can't help feeling a little nostalgic, but like the perennial cycle of life and death a new format is already here and developing fast. Blu-ray duplication until recently was at a similar stage to the early DVD duplication, blank media was prohibitive and burners cost many times that of a DVD writer. Now it is becoming a more popular format and costs are dropping, it is experiencing a growth phase. Blu-ray duplication will never attain the popularity of DVD duplication as it has to compete with the disposable and commoditised status that this format has established; but it will almost certainly find a niche that will guarantee its place in duplication history.

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About The Author: Jeremy Teal is an expert on CD and DVD duplication .
More information about CD duplication at 10th Planet Digital Media and promotional USB sitcks flash-duplication.com.