Comments

Peyton wrote on 12/24/2003, 10:54 AM
Some DVD players seem to have trouble with labels, period. It wouldn't matter how it was printed. Some players don't seem to care at all. I can think of two reasons why labels may throw off a player: the label may slightly imballance the DVD disk itself, or it may thicken the disk as it is held in the player's mechanism enough to put the data surface outside the player's tolerance (distance to the laser.)

Not being an electrical engineer, those theories are not well informed. I have observed that labels make a difference in some players, but not others. I can't see how it would matter how the labels were printed.

Cheers,
Peyton
pb wrote on 12/24/2003, 11:52 AM
If you do small commercial runs you would be prudent to spend 200 USD to buy the Epson disc printer. I get Verbatim 4X printables for 2.25 CAD when I buy 100 at a time so down there you would pay about a buck US. This way you will never have to worry about disc failures due to imbalance. Trust me, printed labels will cause troubles for you.

Peter
Fuzzy John wrote on 12/25/2003, 6:08 AM
I understand the possible bad effects labels can have in general. My question though was whether labels printed on color laser printers are worse than those printed on inkjets. Will the toner cause a label to be more off balance?
pb wrote on 12/25/2003, 6:39 AM
I was in the same quandry a year ago, mate. We have an Okidata laser and a couple of HP inkjets. Before we choked up 4500 CAD for the Microboards Print Factory I tried several different types of label stock AND printed both laser and inkjet. Only one type of Avery label worked from the outset (laser and inkjet) but neither type of printing made any difference. It is the glue's propensity to dry and subsequently tighten the label paper on the disc face that causes the imbalance. Try it and see. In our case the cost benefit of going to the Microboard printer was customer satisfaction -- at 50 Canadian cents a print we won't reach the break even point on the Microboards unit until we have done about 10,000 discs. At runs of 100 DVDs or CDRs at a time, this means we will likely never recover our investment through charge back. However, our customers will not be bad mouthing us for making coasters either. Buy an Epson.

Peter