Let’s just say that I have been stock piling a ton of DVDs with media on them and waiting to label them in the future. Most of the DVDs are of the brand name Maxwell or TDK. I recently had somebody inquire has to what I had on all my DVDs so that meant I had to catalog and label each DVD. Here’s what I found out about the different types of DVD/CD labeling.

Labeling with Stickers

One of the worst ways to label a DVD is with a sticker label. The downfalls with sticker labeling your DVDs are listed below.

1. Putting the sticker label on the DVD incorrectly could cause it to spin unbalanced.
2. Buying the stickers is a pain in itself, some stores carry them, others don’t.
3. Most sticker labels require an ink jet printer to print the label on them.
4. If you print your label on the sticker with the ink jet printer you could run out of ink quickly

Thermal Ink Jet Labeling

Thermal Ink Jet labeling is perhaps a better way to label your DVDs. I tried the Casio CW-75 Thermal Ink Jet Printer / Disc Title Printer and found out the hard way that the technology is really not there. The problems I had with Thermal Ink Jet labeling are as follows.

1. Thermal Ink Jet labeling does not work on all types of DVDs, depends on the coating
2. If there is data on the disc before labeling, it could mess up that data
3. Sometimes it does not completely print what you desire, leaving the printing messed up and the DVD ruined.
4. It requires special ink which costs money!
5. You need a special Thermal Ink Jet printing device, like the Casio which I returned to the store. It will cost you over $100. I’ve looked online and seen some for $1000-$2500.

I was able to label half of my collection, atleast 150 dvds using this method. After that, the Casio pooped out on me and stopped labeling correctly altogether.

LightScribe

After my adventure with Thermal Ink printing I thought about looking into LightScribe for future uses. It is true that I can’t LightScribe my existing DVDs, but I could LightScribe future DVDs. I found out that LightScribe is still expensive and will probably remain expensive. About 25 LightScribe DVDs cost $50. That is an outrageous price which can most likely be attributed to HP’s licensing of the LightScribe technology to other companies. HP was the only company I saw selling LightScribe DVDs at Fry’s Electronics. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough, but the hgih price turned me off almost immediately. There is no way I could burn 300 dvd’s at that price plus the cost of a new LightScribe DVD burner. Ouch. Here’s a list of the issues I have with LightScribe at the moment.

1. Cost per DVD is too high
2. Requires $90 LightScribe DVD burner, which doesn’t burn CDs
3. Rumors that labeling takes a fair amount of time

Labeling with your Hand

Sharpie’s are cheap. I got a box of them at Walmart for around $8. I don’t have the best looking handwriting, but hand written labels work right the first time every time. Writing the label by hand is the cheapest way to label a ton of DVDs, I highly recommend it. Sure your hand may start to hurt, but take a break.

So I am left with labeling the rest of my burnt DVD collection by hand. I would have preferred to have them all printed with a nice professional label, but in the scheme of things, I don’t think it matters anymore. I won’t be going through these DVDs everyday so it won’t really bother me as much. There is no perfect labeling solution out there for CD/DVD labeling yet, all methods have their drawbacks. I have come to realize that it is better just to get your DVDs labeled then to have them half-labeled or not labeled at all.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 9th, 2006 at 6:15 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.