litescribe question

[IDLE]

when using this function, do you have to have a certain type media to use for this? or can you use any type of DVD/CD for this function?

 

[American Zombie]

You have to buy lightscribe disks.

 

[ray_gillespie]

Yes AZ is right, they cost a little more but aren't usually too expensive.

 

[LeeJend]

Light scirbe media:
http://www.meritline.com/lightscribe-blank-media.html
It will say light scribe or LS on the labels.

They have an upper burnable ink coating like on the bottom the laser can lighten or darken to add labels.
-Drawback is they are monochrome. You must have a lightscribe compatible optical drive. Both side of the CD must be burned taking longer.

The alternative is disks with printable top surfaces. HP came up with an ink system and optical disk top coating that can be printed to in Specially designed inkjet printers.
-Draw backs $pecial printer and $pecial media and $pecial inks.

The old way of gluing a paper label on the media has many drawbacks. Worst of all is if the label bubbles or comes loose it will destroy (shatter and come apart) the media and possibly the drive it is in. On optical disks with the "burned" layer on top the glue from the labels attacks the ink and destroys it making the disk useless.

Choose wisely...

 

[dreamliner77]

Don't use labels! They will cause problems eventually.

 

[LordOfLA]

You're more at risk of cheap unbranded/no-name branded discs shattering than labelled discs.

 

[indyjones]

You're more at risk of cheap unbranded/no-name branded discs shattering than labelled discs.

Definatly I remember lots of people who got the silver unbranded CDs only to have the data layer flake off! Also BulkPaq DVD-Rs are rubbish 🙂

Back on topic I have an epson R300 photo printer which can print onto cds and that seems to work really well (you just need to leave the discs a while to dry)