DVD-R prices

Why is it that a spindle of 25 Verbatim DVD-Rs costs 38,95€ at my favorite local store (FNAC)? Yet I can buy the same(*) spindle at the corner shop for 14,95€? (* Ok, it’s not exactly the same: the DVD-Rs sold at FNAC are certified for 16x burning and the corner shop ones only for 8x; but apart from that they both seem to be the genuine article).

I care about the price because I do a daily burn of my entire home directory (compressed) to DVD-R. I do this because my livelihood depends on my data. Erasing and re-writing DVD+RWs is not an attractive option; too much hassle doing the erasing and maintaining a rotation schedule. And if my business isn’t strong enough to afford a non-reusable DVD-R blank each day then perhaps I’m in the wrong business…

Nevertheless it has long bothered me that the prices of the media at FNAC have barely dropped over the last couple of years. I remember when a 25-spindle of TDK media cost 43,95€, but since then it’s only dropped 5€. When my friends in Australia were getting brand-name DVD-R blanks for less that A$1 each I’ve been paying 1,56€ (almost triple the cost!). Having switched to the corner shop I am now paying 0,60€, a much more reasonable price. The slower burn rating doesn’t bother me either because I always burn at the slowest setting anyway (was getting far too many coasters; I suspect my burner isn’t quite up to scratch).

If I were to forgo the Verbatim brand I could get a 50-spindle for a mere 19,95€ (0,40€ per disc) but given the importance of the data I’m not ready to do that just yet. Meanwhile, a double-layer Verbatim DVD+R costs an incredible 9,45€ (for a single unit!) at FNAC. Spindles of any size are not even on the shelves yet. Won’t be switching to double-layer anytime soon as much as I would like to; for the time-being my home directory is limited to about 19GB, which when compressed and temporary files are excluded fits onto a single, single-layer DVD-R.