I had two printers; one was a Canon i9900 inkjet printer used mainly for color photo printing and any other chores that required color; the other was my Brother multi-function unit that has a good laser monochrome printer. The last thing I needed was yet another printer to take up space and to find a USB connector for. But I had to do it, and this is the story.
When DVDs were designed, the decision was made to make them the same physical size as CDs. This was an excellent decision that allowed for commonality of many things - players that could read both types of media, boxes and cases, and even labels. Many of us write CDs for backup or to transfer data but the usual method of labeling the CD was to just take a Sharpie magic marker and write on it freehand. For our own purposes, or for non-business use, this was fine. There are some people who think that using these markers can ultimately deteriorate the CD and cause it to fail, but I have never actually seen that happen.
But if you wanted to make the CD look more professional, the easiest option was to get one of the label kits. These included a number of printable CD labels (two to a page) and a device to center and attach the label to the CD. You used software to design and print the label, then peeled it off the paper and used the applicator to stick it on the CD. Two common brands were Neato and CD Stomper.
Since DVDs were the same size as CDs, it would be natural to assume that you could also label DVDs that way and my box of CD Stomper labels even says "CD/DVD". I called the company and they indicated that it was OK to use them on DVDs. So I naturally started using them on the DVDs that I am creating to preserve our old family videos. The problem is that they seemed to work fine in my DVD player (well, almost always), but often failed at my children's homes. I was getting fairly aggravated bringing a new DVD to them, expecting the family to reminisce over some old video, and having to watch as the TV image lurched and stalled.
Many of my online friends said that you couldn't use those labels on a DVD. Since DVDs have the data much more tightly packed and rotate at higher speed, any slight imbalance caused by the paper label was much more critical. I decided to try a test.
I wrote a fresh DVD on each of my two DVD writer drives and using a detailed test from the Nero package determined that the quality was very good - i.e. low error rates which were tolerable. Note that there are always correctable errors on DVDs. I then printed labels and applied them. Retesting yielded error counts that were much worse than before. So now the question was: what alternative?
There are inkjet printers that can print on special CDs and DVDs made for that purpose and have a blank white face. But my i9900 did not have that compatibility. I looked at products from various printer manufacturers and found that in the US only Epson marketed such a printer. Luckily, Epson was selling a refurbished R220 printer for only $63 including shipping and brand new ink cartridges. I took the plunge and ordered the printer - it came quickly and was in like-new condition. A few tests confirmed that it printed very nice looking DVDs. The R220 is also a regular inkjet and photo printer.
I had also ordered some printable blank DVDs and selected those from a company called Taiyo Yuden. They are the actual manufacturer and their DVDs are often re-labeled for other companies. The word on the 'net is that these DVDs are by far the best and the cost was actually about the same as others.
The final test: I wrote new DVDs for my daughters and they both played without a hitch on their DVD players. Case closed; I will no longer use the printed labels again and I recommend that if you have any reason (amateur or professional) to print good looking labels on CDs or DVDs that you invest in a printer such as the Epson R220.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)