Technology: LightScribe 1.2 And the Colour Revolution

Design & Looks

It has been two years now that LightScribe promised its user base the possibility to print --silkscreen-- onto coloured disc media. A couple of weeks ago Verbatim released the first coloured LightScribe 1.2.x discs. Besides the gold coloured discs, you can now “Lightscribe” onto red, orange, green, yellow and blue-green media.

LightScribe allows you to burn a CD or DVD, and have a label printed onto its label side using a by laser to engrave whatever design you created in the label layer. The LightScribe technology requires a specially designed LightScribe DVD-writer with a laser that is capable of both burning DVDs and engraving at lower power.

Performance

If colour is your thing, the LightScribe colour discs won’t cut it. The discs look fine, but their surface has the same sort of silky but dull surface look of the original LightScribe discs. And engraving the disc doesn’t make it much better, as you can only play with contrast, but not with multiple colours.

And just as with the previous versions of LightScribe, it’s the information you etch into the surface that often lacks contrast in order for you to easily see what the disc contains. Some software does allow you to change contrast levels beyond the “Normal” and “Best” settings, but you can never engrave at a higher contrast setting than “Best”.

Well, actually you can --by etching the same design twice-- but then the disc engraving takes double the time of a one-pass etching process. I fail to see why the LightScribe industry group can’t produce a technology that enables discs to be etched with different colours, on shiny discs. I’m pretty sure manufacturers like Verbatim are capable of manufacturing disc surfaces with differently coloured layers so that a really creative LightScribe design would be possible.

But it’s not happening, and I think that I know why: LightScribe is not bad, but when it comes to really creative disc label design, the vibrancy of colour inks sprayed upon a bright white surface can’t be equalled by any silkscreening technology. Perhaps one day, but not now.

Meanwhile, the Verbatim coloured LightScribe media that’s available today are of the same standard and quality as all of Verbatim’s media products. The DVD’s we tested were 16x speed DVD+R media.