START Lab Inc. (株式会社スタート ・ ラボ; Sony Taiyo Yuden Advanced Recording Technology Laboratory[1][2]) is a joint venture of Sony Corporation and Taiyo Yuden Co., Ltd.
START Lab, founded in June 1989, was active in the optical media business.
Initially intended to produce small-scale runs of CDs for business customers on the basis of newly developed CD-R technology,[3] it pioneered the sale of CD-R media to consumers.
START Lab ceased operations in March 2016 after parent company Taiyo Yuden ended production of storage media.
Well-known product lines included the That's consumer media, the That's CD-R/DVD-R for master product line, and the CD/DVD error checkers (ES-50, ES-70, ES-1000 rebranded Almedio model).