Please pardon me if this is a little off topic but I am sure someone on this forum will have some insight.

For the past several years I have observed that 100 packs of name brand DVD media "on sale" were in the range $16 - $20 US. Since the beginning of this year I am not seeing deals in this range. Prices seem to be in the $22 - $26 US range. Does anyone know of any reasons? Here are my thoughts:

raw material costs? - plastic is a petrochemical - however, most plastic uses natural gas as a feed stock and NG is dirt cheap these days

flooding in Thailand or earthquake/tsunami damage in Japan? Most of the media I have purchased comes from Taiwan - Is there a component of media which comes from Thailand or Japan? Still these natural disasters were quite some time back and hard drive prices are slowly dropping again.

conspiracy theory? Some years back I heard rumors that the recording industry was trying to get a "tax" placed on media because it can be used to bootleg content. I have never seen anything fact based on this.

Just wondering.

Ken

May be it is just that the demand for DVD media is declining, since almost anybody uses USB devices nowadays.

Declining US dollar, inflation, increased transportation costs.

I'm not too sure about how much plastic is made from gas, all the plastic that I used at work (plastic extrusion) was oil sourced as far as I know.

Most of the DVD-R/DVD-RW dye companies are Japan based. How much of the dye in is made in china, I dont know, but IMO it would be at least some of the dye. Knowing Japanese companies though, at some of the dye would be japan-only production.

I cant find a list of the DVD-R dye producers, here is the CD-R list-

http://www.ccssinc.com/index.php?mai..._dye_explained