I have been looking at some duplication towers on eBay. Mainly the kits where you get the tower, control card, and power supply. You then buy your own drives for it.

I am starting to sell more copies of each title but I am not to the place yet where I can have them replicated. Does anyone else have any experiance with dup towers?

We recently bought one, just a three drive unit. No problems with it at all. You can either duplicate a master or copy it to internal HD and duplicate from that. Done Audio CDs and DVD. Not a problem.
Our unit is made by Evocept and uses Pioneer drive, will handle + and - R media including 8x media (haven't tried that yet). Also has USB port so you can download from PC, again haven't tried that as we first make a 'master' and duplicate from that.
For most of us that only get orders for small runs seemed a better idea than a robotic system.

We have a Bravo II - burnt probably 700-1000 DVD's and CD's on it by now - except for on occasional bad media (which the burner caught), never had a problem with playability - that is, it's no different than burning a DVD-R on any other burner. So the replication guys are kinda right - you always run a risk of encountering a player that can't play burned media, but the risk is no higher than what you are already doing.

Now we did have a problem with the printer, and had to return the unit for service - but it was fixed and works great.

I love the fact that with the kiosk I can set up a run of 50 DVD's and let it burn/print overnight. Just did a duplication order (70) for a local high school and they were amazed we turned the order around in 1 day.

--Scott

ive burned about 15-20,000+ dvd-r 's in bravo II's there is no problem with them with good media ...

I use Taiyo Yuden exclusively now .. used to use Riteks , but started seeing lots of problems with them ...

But - in SOME players, no mater what, they will not play some burned media for various reasons .. often the reason is not becuase it is burned , but other factors.

Why we maintain a database at www.videohelp.com of both players and media ..

Thanks for the replys. Based on what you guys have said I am probably going to go ahead and get a dup tower.

I do not currently print onto my discs. I use hub labels instead. It has no affect on my sales either way and the hub labels are cheaper. I do not think I would realize all of the benefits of the Bravo II. Unless of course they make a cheaper version that does not include the printer.

Thanks for all the replies (way back when)!! Great information for sure.

If you are interested in building your own check this thread and this thread.

ILY for example will give you all the tech support you need. They even followed up to see how it went when I ordered the controller and case from them. I didn't even order the burners from them. I bought eight NEC 3520A burners at around $38 each and the duplicator works flawlessly.
Most of the vendors who sell the parts to build your own also sell ready built ones so the tech support is the same in that respect.

John

Thanks to the help of Craftech I built a 7 disc duplicator about 5 months ago. It's so easy to use!!!! Don't have any problems playing the disks on consumer DVD player either.

I also use a Bravo II for occasional duplicating, but mostly for printing to disk. It's a great product. So, from my experience, I would say go either way... self built duplicator or a Bravo II. Don't think you will regret it.

Galen

Thanks guys. I'm leaning towards the Bravo II CD/DVD Duplicator. Can one of you tell me how long it takes the Bravo II to burn/print a DVD with a simple label design? And what advice you have to get the most out of this unit. Thanks again!

It's going to depend on how much content you are burning, and what speed you are willing to burn at. My biggest complaint about the unit is that the printing software does not remember settings across print jobs, so if I want to burn/print concurrently and I'm doing printable to the hub media, you can pretty much forget it (since the defaults are non hub printable media).

My other complaint is that the ink is expensive, especially compared to what I pay for, for ink on my epson R800. I really wish I had the bravo duplicator combined with the R800, that would be a great match.

The big advantage to this unit is that with the kiosk adapter, you can load it up with 50 DVDs and just let it run overnight (usually, assuming that the robot is in a good mood, that the DVDs don't stick together, etc) - if you are doing simple printing then you aren't likely to encounter the issues that I've had.

--Scott

"My biggest complaint about the unit is that the printing software does not remember settings across print jobs"

With the Primera products you have to set your defaults in the control panel and then they should stay the same when you go to print out of your printing program....at least that is what I have found with our signature Pro's. We used to have the same problem where we would set the inner ring to -60 and then we'd do another job and it would be back at 0 again. We went into the control panel and changed the printer properties from there and now it always stays at -60.

Same here. If I change it in printer preferences then it will stay. So that issue has not been a problem. For me, it's just remembering the size of the inner ring, cuz it's in mm.

Galen

Thanks again Scott! I've seen that the Taiyo Yuden looks to be good media. Is it the Taiyo Yuden General or Authoring media? What are you guys using?

Thanks again Scott! I've seen that the Taiyo Yuden looks to be good media. Is it the Taiyo Yuden General or Authoring media? What are you guys using?
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Just use general. I would recommend 4X Taiyo Yuden media. TYG01

John

I just got a catalog from www.discmakers.com .. they also have duplication towers as well as services... anyone use them yet? feedback? terrific looking catalog btw...

I'm using customflix since they're a complete fulfillment/shipping service, they've been great so far..

ken

Note that Authoring Media are different.

There are perhaps 2 burners that can use them, and they cost $2K each if I remember correctly.

Not for regular use at all.