Lightscribe DVD Burner Review

[adbutcher]

I finally used my LightScribe DVD burner and here is the gist of my experience.

I purchased the "LaCie 16x IDE DVD±RW w/LightScribe" from PCmall.com for $119.00 back in January but apparently they had a huge backorder and Lacie wasn't building them fast enough and I didn't actually get my unit until April .

I installed the unit performed a quick test burn and everything worked as it should but I didn’t jack with any of the “silk screening” features until last Thursday.

Now after being all settled in my new locale in Houston, I finally tried all of the features. First of all the positive, the unit burns data very fast, it took just under 3 minutes to burn about 700MB of data. The thing smokes!

Now for the cons, the most prominent negative is the actual light scribe technology. On the highest quality setting (which looks pretty slick) it took approx. 28 minutes to produce a "silk screen like” image & text on the face of the CD-R. On the Brightside the menu/wizard interface is very intuitive. It has some very cool templates for graphics but the fonts are quite bland. The interface allows you to import your own “pictures” and it also it gives you the ability to import playlist information directly on the disc which is by far the coolest feature. For example, if you have a playlist on your puter it will grab that information and populate the disc. Likewise if you have the disc, it will connect to the “CDDB”, download the information, and then populate the disc. This feature cuts down on a lot of typing, which I hate to do anyway. After you are finish setting up your disc, simply insert the disc upside down, and select print and wait.

Another con is the DVD media is quite scarce and expensive. The cheapest I have found was at meritline for $177.60 for a 120 pack, this not acceptable and until this price goes down I won’t be buying any DVD media.

Overall I give the unit an "A+" for burn speeds and "C-" for the LightScribe capabilities. However, if the lower resolution settings displays only marginal quality differences and increases the speed considerably I will change the grade to a "C+/B-".

In a nutshell if you have the need for a new DVD burner I will suggest you buy it but if you are buying it just for the LightScribe technology I will say pass.

Ps, sorry it took so long for the information but getting acclimated to my new surroundings took away from my gadget playtime.

Edit: I found some much reasonable DVD media prices here-->http://search.store.yahoo.com/cgi-b...t=10&only=0&categ=all&catalog=supermediastore

 

[Avery]

Lightscribe is a good idea poorly executed. The burners themselves are affordable but the extra half hour spent in addition to ripping and burning is an issue. An even bigger issue is the media which, at over a $1 a disk, is a total ripoff.

All depends on what you want to do with it I guess. I bought a NEC 3520a from Newegg for under $50 and routinely find 100 packs of either Ritek or Taiko Yuden media for around $25. I don't mind writing on it with a Sharpie myself.

 

[adbutcher]

Interesting:

On the lowest resolution setting, there wasn't any noticeable difference in quality and it was pretty fast. It took a little less than 13 mins.

 

[TruBlueCowboy]

I finally used my LightScribe DVD burner and here is the gist of my experience.

I purchased the "LaCie 16x IDE DVD±RW w/LightScribe" from PCmall.com for $119.00 back in January but apparently they had a huge backorder and Lacie wasn't building them fast enough and I didn't actually get my unit until April .

I installed the unit performed a quick test burn and everything worked as it should but I didn’t jack with any of the “silk screening” features until last Thursday.

Now after being all settled in my new locale in Houston, I finally tried all of the features. First of all the positive, the unit burns data very fast, it took just under 3 minutes to burn about 700MB of data. The thing smokes!

Now for the cons, the most prominent negative is the actual light scribe technology. On the highest quality setting (which looks pretty slick) it took approx. 28 minutes to produce a "silk screen like” image & text on the face of the CD-R. On the Brightside the menu/wizard interface is very intuitive. It has some very cool templates for graphics but the fonts are quite bland. The interface allows you to import your own “pictures” and it also it gives you the ability to import playlist information directly on the disc which is by far the coolest feature. For example, if you have a playlist on your puter it will grab that information and populate the disc. Likewise if you have the disc, it will connect to the “CDDB”, download the information, and then populate the disc. This feature cuts down on a lot of typing, which I hate to do anyway. After you are finish setting up your disc, simply insert the disc upside down, and select print and wait.

Another con is the DVD media is quite scarce and expensive. The cheapest I have found was at meritline for $177.60 for a 120 pack, this not acceptable and until this price goes down I won’t be buying any DVD media.

Overall I give the unit an "A+" for burn speeds and "C-" for the LightScribe capabilities. However, if the lower resolution settings displays only marginal quality differences and increases the speed considerably I will change the grade to a "C+/B-".

In a nutshell if you have the need for a new DVD burner I will suggest you buy it but if you are buying it just for the LightScribe technology I will say pass.

Ps, sorry it took so long for the information but getting acclimated to my new surroundings took away from my gadget playtime.

Edit: I found some much reasonable DVD media prices here-->http://search.store.yahoo.com/cgi-b...t=10&only=0&categ=all&catalog=supermediastore

Thanks for the review AB. I guess I'll hold off on lightscribe drives. And man, do I really want one of those suckers in my home desktop! I'm one of those goofs who builds my own computers because I actually enjoy it, and this was definitely on my To-Do List. I didn't think it would be any quicker than five minutes, but I didn't know they took over half an hour sometimes. I've seen the prices of the lightscribe discs and that's what has held me off initially. I wish dual layer discs would drop in price too.

 

[adbutcher]

Thanks for the review AB. I guess I'll hold off on lightscribe drives. And man, do I really want one of those suckers in my home desktop! I'm one of those goofs who builds my own computers because I actually enjoy it, and this was definitely on my To-Do List. I didn't think it would be any quicker than five minutes, but I didn't know they took over half an hour sometimes. I've seen the prices of the lightscribe discs and that's what has held me off initially. I wish dual layer discs would drop in price too.

Me too.

Overall it could be better but the speed that is burns is definitely its strongest feature.

When I build my new HTC I will probably buy another one.