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Disc Writers Now Print the Label Too
gardolas writes "Rippers and burners with an eye for design have a new way to smarten their image. Disc writers that can print images onto the label sides of the discs will hit the market next month. The LightScribe system has been developed by Verbatim and HP."
dupe.
See here
Er, they are already available. I know someone who has one....
*** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
LightScribe blanks will cost more than ordinary discs, but Verbatim says the difference will be less than the price of a sticky label and the ink needed to print on it. But anyone wanting to use the new system will need to buy a LightScribe drive, and that will cost around $200.
Says the New Scientist article linked to above. So I'd guesstimate that it would be around 50 cents per disk...
FTA:
LightScribe blanks will cost more than ordinary discs, but Verbatim says the difference will be less than the price of a sticky label and the ink needed to print on it. But anyone wanting to use the new system will need to buy a LightScribe drive, and that will cost around $200.
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Call me when they print in color, the FAQ says it only does grayscale.
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That's the tech where you can burn an image into the data side of the CD. This is different.
who cares.
until it can print in full color and cost nothing extra per disc except for the 36 cents in ink like my Epson R300 on the CD's and DVD's it's a joke that will not catch on like Yamaha's system that will put lettering or GFX on the data side empty space.
One set of ink carts in my R300 will print full color on over 200 CD's.
That is only 36 cents in ink for 100% color coverage on each disc. I can easily quadruple that yield by printing only black or color text and no photos, graphics or backgrounds.
Oh let's add one more thing, how much you want to bet that only windows will be able to print on the discs, linux, OSX and other operating systems will not be allowed to use that valuable secret printing technology.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=lightscribe memorex 10 pack is ~8 bucks
... are available right now at Costco. It blew me away -- there's a separate feed for putting your disk in the printer, and it prints your image on the textured label side of the disk.
I was a beta tester for the LightScribe program and have one of the external burners. Here are some answers about MY experience.
1) There are 3 different modes/quality settings for burning the graphic. Good/Better/Best. The "BEST" setting is the darkest, and takes around 45 minutes for a good graphic. Pure text is quicker. And the "good" setting burns really quick with just plain text.
2) I forget the software provided - but it's a basic label making software package that usually prints on Avery labels. It is pretty powerful and easy to use. Easy to import graphics, manipulate text, etc. Works with any font you have. And even comes with about 30-50 "built in" designs that are soft of cheezy - but look good.
3) The media is "special". No idea of cost. My big complaint was that the print able service was GOLD. So, the dark didnt show up as well as I had hoped it would. If the top was silver or white it would be alot cooler. Hopefully they figure out a way to do that.
4) The external burner is either FIREWIRE or USB2. It is a CDRW burner. It is also a 4x (single layer) DVD burner. Mine is external and BLACK - comes with a seperate power supply cord that is nice and small. I never tried it in Linux, sorry.
5) Right now , the media is CDR only. But when I asked about DVDR media in LightScribe format I was not greeted with "no, way". But instead I was informed that if the media became available during beta testing, they would send it. That sort of tells me its in the works.
Burning: The only problem I ever had was burning some DVDR images using Nero. I dont know why it didnt work. Got to 99.9% done and never finished. The problem eventually fixed itself. Everything worked perfectly with the provided software.
Overall (This is what I told HP as well):
I was happy with the device and would continue to use is AS LONG as the media wasn't TOO pricey.
The burning of the image takes too long - but for CDs that I REALLY care about - I am willing to wait. But I wouldnt use the fancy light-scribe media for all the crap I burn and only use once or twice.
Umm... were' not talking about sticky labels here. We're talking about a special, dye-coated layer on the label-side of the disk. Once you've burned your CD you stick the disk, label side down in the drive. You tell the computer your design, and it will "burn" the image (through a photochemical reaction rather than actually burning away the dye) onto the surface of the disk. No sticky lables that can get stuck in the CD player involved at any time. RTFA.
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From the article:
More recently, special printers that print directly onto a disc's label side have come onto the market, but the process isn't very user-friendly.
My Epson Stylus R300 can print directly onto printable CDs. The process isn't that hard. You have to feed a special tray into the front, but that's about it. You have to use Epson's special software, but you also have to use special software for these doodads. Yeah, you have to buy special media, but I'm guessing the price is about the same as for the LightScribe discs.
And the Epson does pretty darn good color and has software for the Mac. (At the time of this writing, Mac support for LightScribe was only available as an SDK for integration into other applications.)
-mo
The market for this is not people who need to just write on the blank disc.. It's for people who want to put an image on a blank disc with their contents. As someone has already noted, small bands pressing their own music is a great application. Other applications could be small software companies. It appears that the first discs are about $8 for 10 which runs about 0.80 per disc. More expensive then regular blanks but still affordable.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Says the New Scientist article linked to above. So I'd guesstimate that it would be around 50 cents per disk...
Where one can buy a printer like the Epson Stylus R200 and use ink jet printable media. The printer fetches $100 and the printable media 25 cents to 77 cents each plus ink. You can print on regular media but the drytime is 1-7 days and the quality is piss poor. I have only printed 100 DVDs with it so far on one black cartrage. The black cartrage runs about $20 for the Epson or less than half for a generic.
There is also the Signature Z1 CD/DVD Printer which is a 200dpi thermal ribbon printer that fetches $140 or so. The ribbon fetchs $20 or so which from what i've heard prints on about 200 cds. So about 10cents a piece. This can be cheaper if you buy brand name media like Verbatim.
LightScribe looks nice, wouldn't run like liquid ink can, and would take up less desktop space but it isn't here yet. At least with the two above options there is a snowball's chance in hell the media will still be around in 5 years.
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Looks like Verbatim and Imation already have their LightScribe DVDs out.
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