First off, we thank the Philips company for generously providing Jan S., one of our reviewers with this LightScribe drive! We here at CD Freaks, like a lot of people out there, are most interested in this new, convenient way to label our discs. We want to test out a few things that we have been reading about and finally we have our chance. The purpose of this article is to just give you all some more information on the LightScribe process and not concern ourselves at this time with the other capabilities of this 16x +/- 2.4x DL drive. So first off, let's take a look at what came in the retail package Jan received:
From the shot we can see pictured a Philips DVDR16LS drive, 3 Philips LightScribe discs, Nero suite v6.6 LightScribe Edition, How to Manual, 4 mounting screws and Nero DVD-VIDEO Plug-in 20% Rebate Card/code.
Here's a few closeups of the key contents, starting with the front of the drive:
Front and
back of the disc jewel case:
And here is a shot of the OEM Nero software disc:
On the next page, we will look at the drive in action and try our hand at LightScribe labeling. We will of course even try how to NOT use LightScribe to see what the heck happens. You know you want to know!
Jan installed the drive along with the Nero 6.6 software without event and discovered that the drive was identified in Windows XP as a Philips DVDR16LS. Next, we show the layout he chose for his first burn. Of course at this time, the resulting product from this layout will be a Sepia or monotone graphic, so keep that in mind when you choose your image. However, we understand that there has already been research conducted into the possibility of providing additional colors in future generations of LightScribe products.
Once we were satisfied with the image we went ahead and started the burn on the Best setting. Length of time for this process will vary on the amount of the disc covered of course, the graphic above took 23 minutes 32 seconds. However, we decided to try burning the same graphic again and used a stopwatch to compare to the time reflected in software and actual time. This burn resulted in a software report of 23m:43s. Timing by hand with a stopwatch gave us 25m:14s. So there is a bit of a difference.
During that time, you will see the following
dialog box that shows the state of the process. As we were interested
in producing the best contrast, we didn't use Normal or Draft which would
be considerably quicker with a much lighter result.
It's finished, time to look at our creation! Nothin's quite a lovin' as something from the oven! The excitement is palpable.
Not bad actually! Text is clear and the graphic at the bottom of the Philips drive ain't too shabby. But, is it good enough for a CD Freak? Sure, but then again, we are never satisified! After a little discussion on MSN, the decision is made to place our project back in the drive and burn the same disc again! Why? because we think we read somewhere that you can do this and the result is even darker with better contrast. But we aren't sure, so the only thing left to do is try of course. For the second burn on the same disc we again chose the Best setting.
Voila!
This is most interesting as we can see additional detail now, especially in areas around the DVDR16LS writing at the bottom! Of course, it's much darker overall. Please bear in mind that these images are severely compressed JPEGs as well and some of the additional contrast is lost due to this. But the indexing capability of the hardware and software are very, very good as we can see. We can also now rest assured that we could re-use a disc many times to add additional information to the label if we wished. Could be handy indeed.
On the next page, we were joined by fellow CD Freak Seán Byrne on MSN and we began chatting a bit about what people might try to do with a LightScribe Burner that would not be in their best interest.
One of the first things that came to mind is what would happen if we finished writing our data, then we decided to label the disc with LightScribe, but we were in a hurry and didn't turn the disc over. Obviously the laser has to have access to the special light sensitive coating in order to create the graphic, we know that, but what would it do to the data side? Inquiring minds want to know. So for the third time, our LS disc would feel the investigative probing of a red laser.
Hmmm, looks like the engineers anticipated for the all to common "human error" factor that they must provide code for. Not only did they tell the user to grab a LS disc, they figured that the user doesn't realize that they need to turn the disc the right way and gave us some guidance in the error message.
Seán, being involved in the IT trade, wondered how many people would be calling tech support with problems resulting from the misguided attempt at placing an Inkjet printable disc in the drive. After all, to the casual user like the person in the next cubicle, or to a five year old, what's the difference? Before we could even ponder such a likely event, Jan was in the testing lab in Germany, watching the Philips drive tray silently gliding closed with an unsuspecting Inkjet disc in tow.
Drat! I mean good, nothing happened and the disc is not damaged. We can forget about submitting any "bugs" with the mishandling of media. At this point, Jan surmised by looking closely at the disc that if we inspect the index area of the media, there are some barcode like markings, similar to what we see in the supermarket. Possibly, before the laser can be used for a label this is checked.
After using the Philips drive today and along with it the Nero LS capable software, we have to say this is very nice technology. We can see that such a process that is integral to the drive gives us new functionality for an already awesome tech, optical drive storage. It actually takes it full circle and makes the process a self contained data storage system! In addition, it looks like we could really have some fun using this setup to decorate our discs with a very professional end result.
The only thing that even the engineers have not tackled yet, is that since this media uses a coating that's light sensitive, it's not a good idea to leave your disc exposed to direct sunlight. Over time, the labeling will fade under these conditions, but of course who would ever do such a thing? We hope you enjoyed this mini review of LightScribe and if you wish to comment on it, or have any questions for Jan, please feel free to ask them here.
