New HP Drive Lets You Burn Your Own Label

way2trivial writes "Wow -- remember Yamaha's DiscT@2? now HP has a invention to use the DVD laser to etch the flip side of CDs and DVDs. I own a nice Epson to print on CD-R/DVD-Rs, it does full color -- but this looks impressive as hell, even if it is in monochrome"

Comments

Cool !!

[varunrebel]

Cool idea...

Only downside it seems is that you cannot use normal CDs. You have to use CDs which can actually are designed to allow this 'burning' on the flipside...

Re:Cool !!

[Kent Simon]

I pretty much figured that would be the case. The data on a CD is stored very close to the label. If you have a CDR you don't mind wasting you could scratch part of the label and see that it goes straight to the plastic protective layer. I imagine the special CD's have an extra layer between the top and the data layer that does not exist on a normal CDR.

Re:Cool !!

[superhoe]

And this makes me wonder:

If the burners with this new technology are just $10 more expensive - and the media required to burn to the flipside is just a 'dime more expensive'.. Where's the added value to the sales?

My guess is that we end users are going to pay much more than just a dime xtra for those CD medias.. :(

Re:Cool !!

[GORby_]

Let's see:
1. it would probably be more expensive, since it would need a layer of plastic and glue in addition to the special etchable layer
2. it's easier when the layer is already on the disc
3. no problems with balance... labels that aren't positioned exactly in the middle will cause unbalance and lots vibration.

Good enough?

Re:Cool !!

[Chalybeous]

My guess is that we end users are going to pay much more than just a dime xtra for those CD medias.. :(

My guess is that the only people who'll pay are the ones who the RIAA decides to get mean with. For example, when I buy an album, I burn a copy to use in the car (basically so my expensive CD doesn't get damaged, and it's no great loss if the car is stolen - it's fair use IMHO, since it's not passed to anyone and I'm not ripping the manufacturers off), and scan the cover and track list to make an insert. With this technology I'd be tempted to either pop the track listing *on* the face of the CD (my handwriting is near illegible, worse if I'm using a marker), or to replicate the on-disc logo or art.
CD pirates will have a field day making use of this device. And so will the lawyers...

Re:Cool !!

[squiggleslash]

Presumably if you're selling media burners and blank discs, you'd like people to chose your products over the competition's. That may well be the "added value to the sales"...

Use a computer? No thanks

[ObviousGuy]

The real leap forward will occur when this is built into camcorders and other media recording devices. The whole idea behind connecting the camera to a computer just so you can save the data on a disc that won't be played on a computer anyway, not to mention printing labels for the disc, is crazy and redundant. Though it is a necessary stopgap until we get these technologies into the cameras, the computer is just another barrier to the development of user-created media.

This is old stuff

[pieterh]

It's just thermal printing with another twist. The good news is that there are no ink cartridges to replace. The bad news is that the paper is _really_ expensive.

Tell you the truth

[SyKOStarchild]

As potentially useful as it would be to use one of these things for CD/DVD Labeling, I am awful fond of saving money and will continue just using a sharpie or an adhesive.

I don't need new tech and new burnable media to keep doing that.

Re:Tell you the truth

[ajs318]

Absolutely. CDs are for listening to {or at any rate, perceiving stored content through some kind of electronic reading device with sensory stimulators}, not looking at. I'll stick with an indelible marker pen. As for DVDs, I don't ever write anything on them anyway; I just write on the card in the box, because -- at four quid a pop for DVD+RW media -- sooner rather than later, they're going to get recorded over.

its brilliant

[katalyst]

because they are giving a new lease of life to an already saturated market; i'm happy with my 32x burner and would not have thought of investing in another cd-burner... and would have upgraded to a dvd-burner whenever i could afford one... but now.. I'll HAVE to consider this...
we'll have happy cd-writer manufacturers, happy cd-manufacturers, happy geeks and very happy software pirates :D
I missed this detail, but what speed does it burn the label at? :p how long would it take to burn a full gfx rich label?

not glued on

[KalvinB]

the problem with regular CDRs is that if you bang them around enough the silver stuff (what the data is burned to) flakes off because it's not encased in the plastic. Those glue on labels help to weaken it. If you try to take a label off, chances are the data goes with it.

Presumably this new method has the label part manufactured on and not attached to the part of the CD the data is written to. Or it's a second layer that more painted on than glued on. However it's done, it's probably much more sound manufacturing than putting a sticker on a CD.

Ben

Seems brilliant...

[odano]

I can't imagine any better way to produce a professional looking CD than with technology like this. Sure it is no better than a sharpie for home users, but for people who burn demo CDs or sell software online and want to make it look professional, this is about as good as it gets.

Chicken or Egg situation

[varunrebel]

An with a number of things in the real world CR-Writers with LightScribe technology and the special CDs are obviously prone to the chicken or egg syndrome

The special CDs won't become popular until the special CD Writers become common and the CD Writers won't become common until the special CDs become common enough...

Re:Excellent for musicians

[Hungus]

You can of course buy printable CDs and DVDs and use a printer like the one I use which is an ezcd4200 it costs me about 12 extra per cd or dvd but I do get full colour with it. Oh and if you are going to do any volume remeber to buy a continuous flow system for your pritner. In fact here is a tutorial I found on hacking your own CFS System

Cool

[Underholdning]

This is a great little feature. Not that I plan to burn great images on the disk. Rather, I plan to burn the contents of the disk - maybe just do an ls -lR | burnlabel. I don't use jewelcases for my CD's or DVD's. They take up too much space. I just keep them in sheets in a binder. The downside is, that the small slip of paper telling me what's on the disk has a limited life span (i.e. I lose it somewhere). This little gimmick will rid me of that problem by fixing the contents to the disk.