How do you print stuff on CD

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Vt102:
ok ok.. I think we both made out points.. :)

Now lets shake hands and find coughs (he deserves a beating for placing that post and starting this discussion) LOL :D

Stoopiddood9:
*shakes hand*

...*grabs baseball bat* =D

coughs:
Lol, I didn't mean piracy it just looks alot better with a label on the cd and just because you think its a little odd spending money on something as pointless as that is your opinion, Others may feel different to the situation and sorry for the trouble I've caused.

nate1749:
To answer your question (which is in broken english so I'm not exactly sure what you're asking), the best ways to print on discs are the following in my opinion

1) Thermal Printing. This directly embeds an image on disc while only making the disc slightly thicker (I'll get to that later too). The cheap thermal route is b/w text only thermal printers. Casio makes ones of these and I think it runs about $80-130. I have it - it's okay, just another china made cheap electronic part that feels very flimsy. There are a few others out there that you don't even need to use a computer for to print text on, you can just put the disc in there and type the letters out and it prints to the disc instead of say a sticker (I also have one of these, it's okay for super simple use, doesn't feel as cheap, but crappy overall to use).

The real thermal printers though run you a lot more. The entry level ones start at about $1000, and go up from there to systems that will automatically print on thousands of discs, those run like 20K. A used professional thermal printer unit for single disc operation runs about 2-4 grand on eBay. Everest is one of the best models out there in my opinion. You should know that with the commercial thermal printers they say you should use media that they approve as if you just use any old recordable disc it may warp it since it gets pretty hot when printing (think of a piece of paper after it comes out of a laser printer).

2) LightScribe. Tons of documentation on this technology, you will need a lightscribe burner which I believe a samsung one will one run you about $35 on ebay and it burns dvd-rs and the reflection rate that it produces hasn't produced any problems for me yet on the data side of things. You'll also need lightscribe media to print on, these discs are everywhere now and to see examples of the results just search images.google.com. I don't like this technology at all - it's slow and I dunno, just annoying. However, if they are ever able to do color (which would require a rehaul of the whole technology) in high-res then I'd like it a lot more.

3) Discs with labels already on them. You'll need to get the discs that have the pre-printed labels on them (not hard to find), but you'll also have to buy a special printer that has a cd/dvd rom spot to put the disc in. I have an HP printer that supports this option, but honestly I've never used it. This route is probably the easiest route though (although you do have to buy a new printer, if yours doesn't already support it, which since you're asking that means it doesn't) for the highest quality results. Ink jet to me always looks okay, but nothing amazing, however, again for disc printing this route will produce fairly high results and be pretty cheap. I would expect some problems with this media since the disc is a little thicker, but for the most part probably problem free.

4) Buy disc labels (e.g. full dvd labels by neato - don't buy off brand labels, they don't stick as well and the quality doesn't look as high when printed on) and print them out on ink/laser jet and "apply" them to discs. This is by far the easiest and cheapest route that can produce you the highest quality results. Highest quality because if you have access to a color laser printer the labels will look amazing, fast because when you print 1 page of labels you make 2 labels essentially and "applying" them takes only about 5-10 seconds. You can obviously use them on any media you already have and the labels aren't even all that expensive (I think like$15 for 100 or something). So I would say this option is perfect, except for one huge massive flaw. When you apply these labels to discs with the applicator the label will often look straight, however, it may be off center by 1-3mm. Doesn't sound like much, however, this makes the disc unbalanced and when it starts spinning really fast in a player the laser of the player is often not able to read the disc since it's essentially wobbling while it's playing. It may also play fine initially, but then screw up later in the disc. My guess for this is that while the disc is spinning it wobbles most near the end of the disc. So if the label isn't placed perfectly on the disc then the disc is ruined - plus the label adds height to the disc making it thicker, again creates some problems with some players (generally like laptop cd-roms and stuff).

Okay, I think that about covers it all!

As for the piracy thing, the site offers disc covers so asking how to print them shouldn't be associated with him pirating the stuff. Regardless, most people are against pirating because it hurts the developers, but when an item is discontinued why does it matter. I mean by pirating a sega saturn disc who are you hurting? The flea market vendor, the ebay seller? I could see a point w/the new stuff that's out, but classic stuff, who cares. I think since the site offers disc covers it's a fair question to ask about the best way to print them.

And not to go totally off topic like this thread already has, but I'm never very sympathetic to all the people who are huge anti-piracy advocates online (let me look at your hard drives and cd cases, you mean to tell me there's not even a few albums in there that weren't paid for) since I run a glass art company where ideas are constantly stolen from me.

This turns into lost sales which equates to lost profit. However, after doing it for a few years I don't really care, to me it's just part of business and it's just a variable that will always be there to some extent in every industry and you just have to learn to survive knowing that their is always going to be a market for the copiers.

In my opinion, when a company does it it's even worse because then it's not just a singe lost sale to a potential customer, but they have taken it and are selling it to customers who are willing to pay (and would have paid for the original)! My favorite is Microsoft who on their xbox discs have a note that says please don't pirate this disc, but their whole company was built around pirating, copying, and stealing everything from ideas (apple (their os), netscape (their browser), lotus (their office suite), novell (networking structure), etc.) to vendor lists (IBM) from their competition and/or partners (IBM on os/2). It's a massive massive hypocrisy in my opinion.

So before anyone whether it be an individual or a company starts lecturing about piracy they should really see if they're calling the kettle black first.

Nate

wshbrngr:
Gee Nate,
why don't you tell tell us what you REALLY think?? ;D

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