LightScribe: The Most Overrated Thing Ever?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A couple months ago I decided to go to an all SATA computer system, so I bought a new DVD burner. It had a lightscribe logo on it, which I didn’t really think to much of at first, but the other day when I was cleaning the case, I saw it again and decided to look up what it means, and it turns out that it’s the ability to print a label onto a blank DVD using a laser. Cool, I thought! Except that my burner refused to spin up a disc label side down. I soon found out that I had to get special discs with special labels which could be etched, and that HP is pretty much the only company that makes this media. So I bought a package of 25 discs and tried it out tonight.

Man, what a ripoff. First of all, it takes a HALF HOUR to burn a label. That’s 5x longer than it takes to burn an actual data DVD! Secondly, the labels are monochrome. The unetched labels in this package are a brass color, which means that the final product is brass for the white space, and various shades of black for the content. Except the final product looks very faded so that I can’t even read the text I printed without looking closely. These lightscribe discs also cost a lot more than the 100 for $20 Riteks that I’ve been buying for Newegg for close to 5 years. This package was $11.99 for 25. I think the reason that only HP makes this media is #1 because they invented the technology (although my burner is a Samsung, and no wonder THEY didn’t hype up this feature at all on the box), and #2 because I bet nobody ever buys a package of discs more than once, and the other media companies (who probably pay a royalty on the logo, and who don’t have an obligation to make this format succeed) know this. I mean, it’s cheaper to just take that extra money and buy sticker labels, so I can print (using the same program too) them in 30 seconds and get an actual label which I can read…

Am I just totally missing something here? Has anyone else had any success (or failure) stories with using LightScribe?

2

My new laptop (a HP) has this feature. I don’t expect I’ll ever use it. Thanks for the warning.

3

Our computer is like 5 years old and we’ve not used it even once. A Sharpie has always been perfectly fine for me, thanks.

4

Well actually you sorta shouldn’t do this. At least not with a CD you plan on playing in a slot-loaded player (such as in the car). I’m not sure how they are with a tray-loaded player, but labels have seriously fallen out of favor.

As for LightScribe…yeah, definitely over hyped. I bought my boyfriend his first DVD burner a couple years ago and it happened to have LightScribe. He thought it was the coolest thing ever and spent all that time scribing his discs.

As someone who goes through a stack of 100 once a year or so and is always looking for a deal on a cake box, I thought he was off his rocker. And then I dumped him.

(I dumped him for other reasons, not for that. but I did find his time wasting off-putting :wink: )

5

I find that the lightscribe dvd labels look very washed out but the cd’s come out great. I know someone out there can explain why. I can’t.

6

I will always use LightScribe for one thing even if for nothing else: System Rescue CDs.

To be sure that, in a moment of panic or the rush to get something done quickly, I don’t forget the steps, I have a little LightScribe label set up that has the step-by-step instructions for mounting an external HD, recovering the partition tables, launching partimage, and recovering the partition images. I’ve never needed it, but if I ever do, it’s there. Legible, unsmudgeable.

I have also used it on occasion simply to make a decorative label, but that’s just a goof for me.

7

I have one of these and I think I’ve done maybe two discs in lightscribe. Needless to say, I haven’t felt the need to burn any more discs with lightscribe labels. Not impressed.

8

I have one of these. It came with the system and they included a blank sample disc so I could try it out. I don’t mind the way it looks but at 45 minutes a disc (plus burning the actual content) it’s just not worth it. A Sharpie takes like 20 seconds and works fine for my labeling needs.

In its favor, I tend to abuse my burnt CDs and the Lightscribe disc has taken a beating and kept on working for longer than most other brands. So with a sample size of 1 disc I’d say they seem pretty durable.

9

I’ve burned over 2,000 DVDs and gone through about a dozen different DVD burners for three different computers. Yep, total freak right here. Whenever there’s a lightscribe burner of the same model available I’ve spent the extra few dollars for the feature. But…I’ve never used Lightscribe :smack:

Just a sharpie every time. To make matters worse, companies like Lite-On will usually have better support and more frequent firmware updates for the non-lightscribe version of the same burner model. And ZipperJJ’s right - sticky labels can screw up the playback of your discs.

Also, Ritek’s have been notorious for bad quality control, playback errors, and degrading discs over a few years time. If you don’t mind spending a little more, I highly recommend getting Taiyo Yuden instead.

10

I have over 1000 burned DVDs in my collection too, and almost all of them are Riteks. In my experience, it’s actually been the BIGGER name brands like Memorex and TDK that tend to have higher fail rates. Ritek has been great to me, and I’m sticking with them. I also like how their labels are non-intrusive, so I get all the sharpie space I need without having a logo or colors getting int the way.

Thanks for the stories. This will be the last lightscribe spindle I buy, and will go back to ignoring that logo on my drive.

11

This has been my experience ever since floppies. Nowadays I always buy the cheapest brand discs and have only very occasional failures, while I had TDK sets with 2 out of 10 discs failing to burn correctly.

12

I use lightscribe often, it took a little practice to make the graphics simple enough to get one to burn in just a few minutes, but I like the way they look the same way if I was handwriting this text, no one here could read it. I always hated the paper labels you could peel off and stick on disks.

13

There are disc manufacturers, and there are disc brands.

The disc manufacturer refers to who actually made the physical, metal disc. Ritek, CMC, and Mitsubishi are all Taiwanese disc manufacturers. Taiyo Yuden is a Japanese disc manufacturer. When considering purchasing blanks, the disc manufacturer is really all that matters in terms of quality control / grade of media.

The disc brand refers to the name that the disc is sold under. TDK, Verbatim, Sony, and Memorex are all disc brands. The branders buy the raw discs from the manufacturers (usually whoever gives them the lowest bid) and stamp their pretty logo on it and sell the discs.

So when you tell me you have a TDK disc, it pretty much tells me nothing about how good the disc will be, because it could be manufactured by Ritek, CMC, Mitsubishi, Taiyo Yuden, or any number of manufacturers. Often the packaging will give you clues though. For example, if it says “Made in Japan” on the label of a spindle of Sony discs, it’s pretty much a dead giveaway that it’ll be Taiyo Yuden manufactured.

So if you buy from Ritek, you’re buying directly from the manufacturer. If you buy a brand name, such as Maxell, and let’s say it’s Ritek manufactured, you’re getting the same thing, except with a pretty label. And usually it costs a ton more!

cdfreaks.com has a lot of good information on which disc manufacturers to buy from, members’ experiences with different manufacturers, where online to buy from the different manufacturers, and what to look for on the packaging of brand names in stores to ensure that you’re buying a certain manufacturer.

14

Yeah, overrated (not sure if it’s the most overrated thing ever though)

If the lighscribe labelling comes out too faint, you can put it in and scribe it again - because the ‘print’ side has very accurate indexing markers, it will overwrite in perfect register and will come out darker the next time (although of course it will take another half hour)

15

Back when I first started using a DVD burner, I kept hearing to avoid CMC discs like hell. Memorex used them, and big surprise that almost any video DVD I burned from my Memorex package (this was back when 25 discs cost $50 too!) would not play properly…

Oh, and getting back on topic, I did discover that there’s a vast difference in time between printing a label downloaded from cdcovers.cc and using a cover maker to print “2/20/09” (which still takes about 8 minutes, as opposed to 30 for a full disc graphic)

16

I actually love my lightscribe burner. I make a lot of CDs for friends and I love being able to burn some sort of pretty picture onto the CD. Some pictures just work better than others, but I’m usually happy with the result. The process is time consuming, that is a definite drawback.

17

I bought an external LightScibe, because I needed a DVD-burner anyway. Soon after I bought an Epson printer that has a disc tray to use with print-on-discs. You can get full-color labels without having to stick them on. It’s perfect. (Until the printer starts crapping out, but that’s a different problem.)

18

if you coat them with laquer after printing, they look as good as mass-produced DVDs (you can buy laquer labelled expressly for this purpose, although I think it’s probably just ordinary clear laquer)