Best Blu Ray Media Brands Part 14: TDK Media/ Discs Review
TDK was once, in the 1980s, the pinnacle of audio-grade magnetic media. In the past few years it has not been a manufacturer of optical media, and had factored miscellaneous mediocre media products under its brand, resulting in a poor DVD media quality rating of 75%. This sad state of affairs has changed since the introduction of Blu Ray, and TDK is now manufacturing optical media itself, with what appears to be very high quality. In fact, TDK's Blu Ray Coating, Durabis 2, has been the most impressive to web reviewers (maybe thanks to some good PR:-), and TDK claims that its BD-RE discs are rewritable for over 10,000 cycles, about 10x more than what the Blu Ray standard calls for -is it marketing hype, though? We found TDK fairly well distributed (probably thanks to a distribution/ licensing agreement with Imation), and were able to find BD-R, BD-R DL, BD-RE and BD-RE DL formats online in quantity. We gathered 39 user reviews for TDK Blu Ray media, well distributed across its different formats, with an outstanding uncorrected rating of 97%. Since TDK is a manufacturer of Blu Ray media, while it was not manufacturing but factoring DVD media, we did not use its DVD brand rating. To create our predictive quality rating for TDK Blu Ray media, following our standard process, since 39 reviews did not give us a margin of error of 5% or below, we lowered the resulting rating by 1% to allow for a negative statistical margin of error (with 95% certainty) of exactly 5%. TDK's Blu Ray media predictive quality rating gathers a outstanding score of 96%, which could still trend upwards by 1% as more user reviews are published. TDK's predictive rating is the second highest score in the category, and we have no hesitation in endorsing it for archival purposes.
Conclusions
- TDK's Blu Ray media predictive quality rating is 96%, the second highest score in the category.
- We consider TDK Blu Ray media to be of archival quality.
- At this time we recommend TDK Blu Ray media for any use, including data archival.
To understand Blu Ray lingo, check our lexicon of Blu Ray vocabulary. Our Blu Ray brand predictive quality rating process is explained here. Our statistical analysis practices are described here, which is also where we discuss ConsumerPla.net's predictive quality rating.
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2 comments:
Be careful, folks! The original TDK BD-R's made by TDK were excellent media. Much of what TDK sells now are actually made by inferior BD-R manufacturers. Do not expect to get archival(or even good) quality BD-R's from the TDK brand unless you can be sure they are made in Japan.
Blu Ray Media: TDK Review, 2/15/2011 - "TDK is now manufacturing optical media itself"
A call to TDK Support verified Internet research that TDK is using a few 3rd parties (mostly RITEK) to manufacture their BD-Rs -- they DO NOT manufacture their own. (Also, I have in front of me a batch of TDKs, package dated 2009, with "RITEK-BR2-000" disc ID.)
How are we to take the results of TDK's rating of "we recommand TDK Blu Ray media for any use, including data archival" when Ritek's rating is "we do not recommend Ritek Blu Ray for any use at this time"?
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