In today's business arena, it is more important than ever to project an image that attracts potential customers and clients. Businesses go to great lengths to make sure that they're professionally groomed and personally prepared, but it's important that you make sure that all your business paraphernalia look polished and professional, too. You may have taken the time with your printed materials and they look great, but what about your digital based information? Are you making a lasting impression with your employees, vendors and clients when you disseminate your organization's digital assets? Printable CD technology helps you achieve you goals. Read More

I am sure many of you are wondering is it Taiyo Yuden or JVC.  Well here is the 411 on this topic.  As so many of you in the CD-R and DVD-R industry know, when you are looking for an excellent quality, super reliable disc Taiyo Yuden is a great one to buy.

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At first appearance a CD and  DVD blank media look exactly the same.  It's hard to imagine what makes them so different. Certainly both have reflective layers but the similarities end there.  A recordable DVD has a purple (or brown) recording side and a CD recordable has a silver green or blue appearance.  The difference in color is caused by the interaction of the reflective layer, usually silver and the recording dye layer.  Because the dyes are different and have different optical characteristics they appear a different color.  When the reflective layer is different then silver, like gold then the colors specifically on a DVD go from purple to brown.

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Professional BD, DVD, CD printers

Unlike the home CD printer a professional DVD/CD printer is designed for continuous CD printing and features a built in disc tray that self aligns itself.

The links provide greater information on each DVD CD label printer to avoid a major novel on one page. If you have any questions or observations please give us feedback via the comments. We would love to hear from you. :)

Primera Technology

Primera uses in-line robotics in it's newest offerings. A long way from the old Composer series which had a swinging robotic arm.

Bravo II Auto-loader: Primera's auto-loaders and automated DVD duplicators use a Lexmark print engine. The Bravo II series use a two ink cartridge system. Primera/lexmark ink is proprietary, that is one can only buy Primera 'branded' cartridges. The Bravo II is PC and Mac compatible and connects via a USB cable. Includes disc labeling software. One year warranty

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Surprisingly the cheapest way to print high quality CD-R and DVD-R is to out-source your production.  That is have a service bureau or duplication business do the printing for you.  The price may seem high until one figures in the cost of purchasing CD printer equipment, printable discs and ink.  Also any labor costs need to be figured into the cost. 

Lets move onto some other cheap methods for printing labels.  Probably the most obvious and also the worst method of labeling CDs and DVDS is to use stick on labels.  Several major issues with stick on labels include the glue damaging the recording layer, label peeling off in the player and the unbalancing of the disc while recording and playback. This wobble damages the drive and makes a poor quality copy.

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The change of Taiyo Yuden to JVC Advanced Media has caused some confusion in product number changes and additions.  JVC is releasing a new consumer line which some have confused with the Taiyo Yuden product line.  The Taiyo Yuden CD-R, DVD-R and DVD+R are being converted to JVC product numbers and are now branded as the 'Professional line' with different packaging then the consumer brand and a wider range of products.  To aid our clients in understanding the changes we have put together a outline of the changing product numbers and new additions in the JVC line.

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We were asked the other day about the advantages and disadvantages of CD-R or DVD recordable disc. 

This certainly is not an easy answer with all the various types of data storage available today.

CD-R and DVD-R and DVD+R are 'Write Once, Read Many' formats.  This capability is called "WORM' for short.

 This means you can only write to the disc once (or in multi-session several times to different locations on the disc before finalizing).

This is unlike other formats used for hard drives, flash memory, backup tape and certain optical formats like the +RW and -RW in DVD recordable that can be erased and re written hundreds or millions of times (in disc based hard drives).

A CD-R or recordable DVD provides an "archive", or permanent record of the data copied.  That is it's main advantage over all other types of data storage.

Disc longevity compliments the WORM feature by protecting the data for 100 years or more.  This is where a quality disc surpasses the bargain disc.  Bargain discs life span can be in days instead of years.

The disadvantages of recordable discs are numerous.  

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People are often surprised to find out that a silver inkjet printable surface is available for CD-R and DVD-R and DVD+R. The more common white inkjet CDs or DVD is far more common and has a noticeably different printed label result. White provides an excellent background to most colors and helps make the colors really pop from the label printer. The white surface is applied in a single layer and has no real "depth" to it. It does provide a base white background to the image. White inkjet printable discs are used the most in our experience.

Silver inkjet CDs are meant to mimic a shiny silver thermal printable disc .  Shiny silver discs have a mirror like finish to them.  When they are printed on, the print appears to hover above the reflective surface because there is a clear coat the ink sits on.

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JVC Advanced Media, (formallyTaiyo Yuden) has been recognized as one of the leading manufacturers of DVD recordable blank discs. JVC  has many types of specialized surfaces including thermal printable, white thermal printable, white ink jet printable, silver inkjet printable and Everest printable surfaces. It's not surprising that JVCAM would introduce a new type of inkjet printable surface called "watershield".

JVC Advanced Media Watershield DVD surface offers a glossy label finish, water-resistant, fade-resistant, hub printable and works in just about any inkjet DVD printer. Unlike some other "water-resistant" printable disc surfaces Watershield is spun applied during the manufacturing process and not applied later as a sticky label. This creates better disc integrity as the surface is evenly applied. Typically an applied label is not centered thus creating an unbalanced disc in the recording and playback mode.

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A very confusing term for CD label printers is the use of the word “thermal”.  In this article I will explain the difference between thermal inkjet and inkjet as related to CD labeling.

The first thing to understand is thermal direct printing and thermal inkjet are not related in anyway except for the fact that they are both CD/DVD printing methods.  One can not print on thermal printable disc media with a ‘thermal’ inkjet printer unless you want a big smear of ink on your disc.  The printable media for thermal printing and thermal inkjet printing are completely different. Inkjet printable media absorbs ink unlike thermal printable discs that are designed not to absorb ink.

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Printable CD media comes in inkjet CD, thermal printable CD and thermal re-transfer for the Rimage Everest & Teac P55. We are often asked the difference between thermal and inkjet printable discs.

Printable CDs for inkjet CD printers come in white printable, silver printable and gold printable ink absorbent surfaces.This is an additional coat on top of a thermal printable surface.

For the most part inkjet printable CD-R surfaces appear matte in finish.  Printable CD discs come in both a standard print diameter and a hub printable CD. This allows printing right up to the center hub (hole) in the printable CD-R discs. There are some manufacturers who coat to the hub with the special inkjet coating but do not extend the silver or white coating thus creating a difference in color hue.   Many surfaces are not pure white nor pure silver.

The drying characteristic of the printable CD tends to make the printable surface off white. Silver inkjet printable runs in a range of metallic gray silver to a white silver, almost a pearl white.

Silver printable CDs special feature is it's 3-D effect on the disc label. Silver inkjet tends to mute the colors down a bit but is very eye-catching with the reflection.

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