B. Mann Consulting

My first pack of DVD-Rs cost me $40 for a 5-pack. Still, there's no other option for storing digital video to watch on your TV or to conveniently back up data that's larger than what fits on a CD -- a CD stores about 700MB, while a DVD stores 4.7GB, about 6.5 times more. So, with blank CDs costing about 30¢, that's almost $2 vs. the $8 it costs to store the same amount on a DVD.

But that has definitely changed. Read on for details on this pricing miracle.

Today I bought my first spindle of blank DVDs. A spindle is a bulk pack of blank media. Blank CDs or DVDs are sold in packs of 25, 50, or even 100, stored on a plastic container with a spindle in the middle which is threaded through the hole in the center of the discs.

I typically go to OEMExpress here in Ottawa to buy blank media, or any other component parts I might need. It's a little shop with nothing more than a counter and a giant warehouse, located on a side street that's hard to get to on foot.

For about a year, blank CDs have stood even at about 30¢ each. If you're paying more, you're paying too much -- I guarantee there's a store somewhere close by where you can get those kind of prices.

However, the blank DVD-Rs (there are a bunch of different formats, including DVD+R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW...DVD-R still seem to be the cheapest and most common) today cost $79 for a 50 pack. Or around $1.80 each, which is all of sudden slightly cheaper than the equivalent amount of CDs!

Of course, DVDs are no good for making music CDs to play in the car, and not all computers have a DVD drive that can read them. But from now on, I'm going to do all my large archiving with DVDs.