By: Erik Vlietinck
Tue, February 19, 2008 - 10:17:00

http://www.lightscribe.com
Score:

Has it been two years now that LightScribe promised its user base the possibility to print --silkscreen-- onto coloured disc media? I believe so. A couple of weeks ago Verbatim released the first coloured LightScribe 1.2.x discs. Besides the gold coloured discs, you can now “Lightscribe” onto red, orange, green, yellow and blue-green media.

LightScribe is a technology that allows you to burn a CD or DVD, and have a label printed onto its label side using a by laser to engrave whatever design you created in the label layer. The LightScribe technology requires a specially designed LightScribe DVD-writer with a laser that is capable of both burning DVDs and engraving at lower power. Lasers can’t create colour themselves, so if colour is what you need, you’ll choose for a direct-to-CD/DVD print technology using an inkjet colour printer and a DVD/CD disc with an ink-absorbing coating.

If colour is your thing, the LightScribe colour discs won’t cut it. The discs look fine, but their surface has the same sort of silky surface look of the original LightScribe discs. And engraving the disc doesn’t make it much better, as you can only play with contrast, but not with multiple colours.

The LightScribe industry group never intended colour LightScribe discs for creative design purposes. Instead, the unique selling proposition was that colours would make it easier to categorise your discs once they’ve been burned. But for categorisation, colour alone doesn’t cut it. You must be able to tag a disc with some information --especially if you’re burning photos or video to a disc.

And just as with the previous versions of LightScribe, it’s the information you etch into the surface that often lacks contrast in order for you to easily see what the disc contains. Some software does allow you to change contrast levels beyond the “Normal” and “Best” settings, but you can never engrave at a higher contrast setting than “Best”.

Well, actually you can --by etching the same design twice-- but then the disc engraving takes double the time of a one-pass etching process. Another flaw in the LightScribe technology, in my opinion, is that the surface of these discs is especially sensitive to fingerprints. True, when you “paint” a CD/DVD, your fingerprints will also show on the disc’s surface, but with that process you are expecting as much. With an etching technology, you might be forgiven to expect less smudging.

By now, it’s clear that I’m not a great fan of LightScribe technology. I fail to understand why the LightScribe industry group can’t produce a technology that enables discs to be etched with different colours, on shiny discs. I’m pretty sure manufacturers like Verbatim are capable of manufacturing disc surfaces with differently coloured layers so that a really creative LightScribe design would be possible.

But it’s not happening, and I think that I know why: LightScribe is not bad, but when it comes to really creative disc label design, the vibrancy of colour inks sprayed upon a bright white surface can’t be equalled by any silkscreening technology. Perhaps one day, but not now.

Meanwhile, the Verbatim coloured LightScribe media that’s available today are of the same standard and quality as all of Verbatim’s media products. The DVD’s we tested were 16x speed DVD+R media.