2002 was about when the whole market got disrupted by Lite-on, ironically. I was working in retail at the time and recall how their models just kept dropping from the 100-150ish range down to 50-75$ (and just kept going lower.)
What was even crazier was how fast DVD burners saw commoditization. The first Pioneer DVD Burner in 2001 launched at something like 1000$, and by 2004 lite-on was selling models for under 75$.
And, for most people, the Lite-On models were fine. I did have one customer that switched back to either Pioneer or Plextor (I can't remember which) because they were doing a -lot- of DVD writing (we're talking 4 burners running at once, that was a fun build to spec out!) and the Lite-On drives kept failing under the extreme use. Lite-On did have a good warranty process, however the downtime cost him enough that one day that he flat out asked what he should buy that was better. The drives we wound up going with were more than double the cost of the Lite-Ons, but he never had to warranty those [0].
[0] - Although, they did get seized in a raid apparently <_<
>[0] - Although, they did get seized in a raid apparently <_<
Go on…
> Go on…
>> they were doing a -lot- of DVD writing
I'll then add that when I helped them with their first 4 burner build, they were so happy that they gifted me with a subtitled copy of Battle Royale before such existed on the open market (they somehow clocked me as a closeted weeb I guess...)
The reason I know about the raid, is they came in one Saturday in a frantic state, asking to build a new basic-as-hell rig to 'get back up and running' after the fact. Showed me the local news article, and yep in the seized goods if you zoomed in you could about make out our shop's case badge. They did have to go with Lite-Ons for that temporary build due to stocking, but did also have me re-order the better drives after the fact.
Have to add, he was a very honest customer with us. By that I mean, he was not one of the 'hagglers' we had to deal with[0], and we got the better drives in quickly, he came in and paid for them, but he did not abuse our return policy and return the Lite-On drives even though he could have [1].
Also wasn't a super frequent customer, but he was overall chill enough that he did have the note in our system of "This guy is cool, hook him up!" even the first time I got to work with him [2]
[0] - Ever have someone try to haggle a used K5 or Pentium chip that was priced at 5$ in 2002? I have.
[1] - One of our other customers that ran an independent computer repair shop, had a habit of buying products from us to complete a repair while ordering the same part from Newegg, and then returning the part Newegg delivered to them once they got it delivered. We only discovered it due to RMA discrepancies. That customer was 50% of the reason we started tracking Serial numbers for certain items, the other 50% being people who abused our return policy to deal with defective creative labs products.
[2] - Life pro tip, do not assign the note of "Customer Stole from us Call police" to yourself as a shitpost, when you go to a store 2 years after you left and the floor staff has rotated it gets a bit weird till they double check with management.