You should wean yourself off paper labels. They can in some cases make the disc less compatible during playback on some players.

The Epson R220 has a disc tray so you can print directly on an ink-jet compatible disc. Putting a paper label on a disc and then running it through the printer would be kinda lame.

The Epson's are great, cheap printers. The R220 generally sells for under $100.

I've found the best prices at Sams or Costco for Verbatim white ink-jet ready printable dvd's ($35 or so for a 100 pack). And I have an older Epson Photo 900 and it works great...the printing looks beautiful. My only problem is I only use it every few months and it keeps getting clogged.


Sean
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broadcast voiceovers

1) In the US, anyway.

2) Any Epson that supports disc writing is great. I have the R200 (around $90) and it's been great.

3) Any name brand should be fine.

4) If you want to use regular labels you'd just do that like you have been doing.

5) Yes.

If you don't like the corporate market fixing practices common here in the United States you can easily modify a Canon printer to print CDs and DVDs just like they can in the rest of the world instead of buying an Epson. I own an Epson R300 which is OK. I modified a Canon Ip4000 that works better.

John

I've worn out one Epson R200 and one R320 printing DVDs, they have the exact same disc printing mechanism and it is a piece of junk. To be specific: frequent error messages and wears out quickly.

I just bought an Epson R800, this has a much sturdier DVD printing tray, and it also prints faster. Paid $200 for a factory refurb on eBay with a 1 year warranty, they're about $400 new.

After printing 35 DVDs, the ink gauges were still pegged, so I think the ink consumption is also lower for this model, and of course you can also get continuous flow bottles for it.

i'm on my second R200 (well, the first was the 200, the second is the 220). I printed several hundred disks between the two (maybe 300, ~200 on the first one) and was completely satisfied with it. like coursedesign said, the 200 & 300 lines are basicly the same printer but the 300 has a few more consumer features (not worth it imho).

if you're doing ~15 a year get the cheap one & see how that goes. I haven't had many problems with the 220 (the 200's tray wasn't as good as the one with the 220).

I am also with the crowd. Have had R200 for years.

One thing I like about this model series is the fact you
can replace each color individually as needed.

You can find almost any media / size that is inkjet printable.
Latest is 8cm DVD+/-R.

Years ago my wife and I did silk screening and inkjet is so much easier.
You can silkscren a "corporate standard" disc and print a white inkjet section
for disc name / title. ........ see a past post if ever interested.

I just jumped into this myself this past weekend. Did my searching online only to discover that a few of the Epson printers are currently the only printers that have this feature...in an affordable way.

Checking the Epson website, I discovered one of their newest printer's, the R260 Ultra HI-Definition Photo Printer, which prints on CD/DVD media. Below is the weblink to Epson's webpage for compatible inkjet printing media.

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/CDLanding.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes#software

The printer itself was on sale for $99.99 (regularly $129.99) and came with a single Memorex Printable CD-R to tryout, so I additionally picked up a 30-pack of Memorex CD-R (white label) on sale for $5.99

A sales rep from Epson was in the store when I was checking the printer out and was actually able to hand me a printed CD-R, of which I was very impressed with the print quality. The R260 uses 6 ink catridges for lab-photo quality reproduction in terms of color, as well as the the ink being water-proof and smudge-proof. The sales rep said that one could scrape off the printing if your ran your nail hard enough against the surface, which I tried, but you'd have to really want to scratch off the printing, it doesn't come off too easily.

I got home and put together a CD disc graphic and printed that to the CD-R media and it worked brilliantly...looks totally professional. I'm excited at the possibilities that I can do now for making discs look much more professional.

As mentioned, many Canon printers are designed to print to CDs, but for US patent reasons they are intentionally crippled in the USA. You can, however, easily get around the problem. I bought a slightly-used IP3000 on eBay and invested $40 additional for a CD carrier and a little roller assembly that the US model leaves off. Works great.

I've used an Epson pigment printer for years and have created thousands of stick-on labelled DVDs and CDs. The Meritline glossy labels look great, and the Epson pigment ink is non-fading and non-smearing. Just in the past month, however, Taio Yuden has begun selling glossy blank DVDs and CDs, and I will soon migrate to them. They're a bit expensive, though.

As a follow up answer to your question about if the Epson printer will print to a disc that has a white label applied to it...the answer is YES. I thought your suggestion was a good one and just tried it out, it printed on the white label without any problems. Thanks for that idea!!!

..."As a follow up answer to your question about if the Epson printer will print to a disc that has a white label applied to it...the answer is YES. I thought your suggestion was a good one and just tried it out, it printed on the white label without any problems. Thanks for that idea!!!"...

So you buy a printer that prints directly on discs, then affix a label to the disc and consequently print on that label-covered disc. Brilliant!

hint: let the disk's dry out BEFORE you try spraying krylon (or the generic kind) on the disk. ll the disk's I've waited ~1 day to spray/seal have never yellowed, & I've been doing that for ~3 years now (yes, I can pull out a disk that old that hasn't yellowed & I can pull out a disk i sprayed three months ago that has yellowed because I printed & sprayed within 1 hour)

Happy Friar and everybody...

Any idea if the CcMmYyK inks of the Epson 220 are better/worse than the Claria Inks of the Epson 340?

Do I really have to spray something on the disks after I print to keep them from smudging?

Thanks for ALL YOUR GREAT THOUGHTS!!

from what I've read here, if you get the nice glossy disks you don't need to spray (they waterproof?), but for the matte ones, yes. But you can get the generic Krylon cheap... the local Value often has sales of the generic for $0.99 a can (and I get ~5 each time, so I'm stocked!)