LightScribe : Computer Hardware Buyers’ Glossary

LightScribe

A combination of a special DVD (Digital Video Disk) burner, special DVD or CD (Compact Disk) blank discs, and free software that allow you to etch black and white photographs or images on the back of DVDs to label them. You flip the DVD over and the laser etches the design in the special light sensitive coating. You can get them in a number of different background colours.

The labels look professional, not something scribbled with a Sharpie permanent marker.
The advantages over paper labels are they can’t come off and gum up the mechanism and they have no thickness or weight to interfere with the operation.
The process puts no mechanical or chemical stress on the DVD which could interfere with the data recording.
If you make backup copies of your master software disks onto LightScribe CD s, you can engrave the enabling keys onto the discs where they cannot get lost, and in clearly readable type. Hand-written keys can sometimes later be hard to decipher, and the originals are easily lost.
The DVD is very unlikely to get scratched in the process, unlike schemes that put the DVD through an inkjet printer.

LightScribe in monochrome, unlike an inkjet printer which ran print labels is full colour. You buy the LightScripe blanks in the background colour you like, but the foreground is always black.
The etching process is quite slow. It can take 45 minutes to etch the entire CD surface or 15 minutes just to do a title band. Unlike a printer, there is just only one “print nozzle” — the DVD laser.
The colour of the surface is not encoded. You must tell the software what it is.
The blanks cost twice as much as ordinary.
The labelling software comes with only a few patterns. You must manually download and install many small free packs to get the entire set.
If you get a printer with a DVD holder, you can print full colour DVD labels in a few seconds, and without having to buy expensive LightScribe blanks.
It roughly doubles the cost of the drive.

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