Posted by Bob Terwilliger on 08/07/06 00:52

Mr Bigun wrote:

> Explain why, when cds came out the excuse for them being 15 dollars
> was how they "cost so much to make".. yet now, as that has been shown
> to be a lie and anyone with a burner can make one for 5 -10 cents..

While I'm not trying to justify CD prices in any way, I'd like to point out
that commercial CD's are made by a totally different process than by burning
to CD-R. Commercial CD's are made by etching a set of pits into a piece of
foil which gets put onto a clear piece of plastic. They're much more durable
than CD-R's, which can degrade to uselessness in just a few years if they're
kept in the wrong environment. (A friend of mine in Hawaii has to burn new
backup CD's every year or so because of that.)

I don't know how expensive it is to manufacture commercial CD's, so whether
the cost is justified is unknown to me, but I can state with assurance that
they are not the same as "burned" CD's.

Bob

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