Ooooooh

[filkertom]

Lightscribe is way cool. Slow, but way cool.

Has anyone else used Lightscribe drives? If so, have you found good media? I've got access to Memorex, HP (way too frickin' expensive), and I think TDK down at the CompUSA, and I can order Imation (which seems to be the brand everyone recommends) online. What you got?

Comments

[sylverwolfe.livejournal.com]

when i worked at office depot, just as lightscribe was hitting the market but before media was readily available, the tech manager who demo'd the drive for me said imation was the way to go. tony's advice has never let me down yet as far as all things tech, so i'm gonna add my voice to the imation chorus.
and i agree, lightscribe is WAY cool. if only hp wasn't so proprietary, i'd be planning my next computer with a lightscribe drive. as is, i have too many non-hp peripherals that don't yet need replacing that wouldn't play nicely with an hp machine.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Screw HP. I'm never getting one of their drives again. The last one was a DVD writer that was $40 cheaper than the Plextor I eventually bought when the HP drive imploded, corrupted my main hard drive, and cost me seven hours just trying to frickin' boot on the Saturday of PenguiCon 2.0. There are several non-HP Lightscribe drives, and as soon as the price comes down on a decent external one I'm gonna get that so I can use it with the laptop. LiteOn and BenQ are apparently good and cheap; the link above is to the LiteOn drive I just got from New Egg. Fair warning: In the store, they're about twice as much or more what they are online.

[sylverwolfe.livejournal.com]

cool; good to know they're no longer hp-only. last i knew (see how long i've been off the tech scene?) hp was the only place to get them. it'll be a few years yet before i get another desktop (and it's NOT gonna be another dell if i have anything to say about it), so i have time to dream and contemplate a machine with all the niftiness.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

"Lightscribe" looks interesting, but haven't encountered one in the wild. You liking it?

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

So far, yeah. Biggest limitation is that it's got three "quality" settings, and the best is by far the slowest -- a half-hour or so on a simple label. But it's considerably darker and sharper than the lowest setting, and not a whole lot longer than the medium. And it looks so much cooler than printed labels (which do have the advantage of being faster and more visually engaging, 'cause, y'know, color stands out... but that's one of the reasons I'm using Memorex color CD cases).

The best part was that the Sure Thing CD software I use for label design is Lightscribe ready, and all I had to do was transfer an existing design to a new "paper stock", i.e., Lightscribe, which was one menu click, and I was ready. When you have a Lightscribe design, it automatically "prints" to that. Easy as anything.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I do not trust any sort of labler that burns the back of a CD/DVD with lasers. Since the back is more sensitive to scratches and marks, and the data on the disc is burned with a laser to start with, I would worry about the damage done to the data carrying media if I burned the back of the disc. There are inkjet printers that print discs directly, but they require special (see: Expensive and slow) media with the lable already on it.

My ideal CD printer would be a dye-sub printer that prints wax right on the disc, and does so in the usually XY matrix instead of spinning the disc. This would be fast (<30secs per disc), data safe and waterproof. But since dye-sub printers are expensive and only Tektronix makes them (the Phaser), there isn't much hope that such a device will ever be made.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

These also are special (see: expensive and slow) media. And the process is more of a heat-activated-dye thing, actually. They don't come out of the drive hot or anything, and I've played a few of them successfully right after the burning/printing.

Lightscribe

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... yep, I wrote about lightscribe stuff in my journal months back ... the links I found suggested that if you want even better quality output, print the disc twice (a third time is possible but has less additional effect, four times is pretty pointless) and that the lightscribe drives are sufficiently accurate that the extra printing will align beautifully and you'll get even better contrast.

I ended up not buying one (but at least partly because I ended up not buying another drive at that point, I may still buy one the next time I'm buying a DVD writer)

Re: Lightscribe

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I got it primarily because I thought it was cool, secondarily because I wanted/needed a new drive, and tertiarily because printing and CD Stomping labels is an expensive asspain. This process is much slower, at least for now... but the final results look amazing.

[hms42]

I can't comment on Lightscribe since I don't have the feature on my DVD burner or my macbook.

An option you might want to consider.... internal drive and external enclosure for the drive. On sale enclosures should not be that bad in price for a 5.25 drive. My external DVD burner is an enclosure I got from compusa and a cheap DVD burner (clearance, Cendyne for $25 about 1 - 1 1/2 years back). I think it ran me less than $60 for an external drive.

Harold