Recommendation for DVD Disc Printer?

[golfnut]

Can anyone recommend a reliable and reasonably priced printer for printing direct to DVD discs? I know there are articles on this site for making your own but wondered if any are available that will do a nice job duplicating original artwork to blank disc. Thank you.

[The village idiot]

The EZ/cd brand, the Epson 900, the Epson 950 (960) are all good printers. You can also spend more money on some kind of fancy disk only machine aimed at professionals, but they really are not any better quality, just different operation, Primera makes several models of these, and several other companies. If you are in Europe, you might be able to get a Canon printer that will do the same, but not in the US. There are also a few one off models that people are modifying and selling, up to a 6 disk Epson 1520 printer for between $800 and $1000 USD (I hope that price includes the printer). SOme will claim a really high resolution, but the disks are really only about 720x720dpi, so quality might be an issue. It certainly isn't going to look like a photo printed onto a fine art archival paper, nor are there really good glossy disks. The "glossy" disks that people are using seem to take a very long time to dry, which suggestsd that they are not really inkjet printable disks, but thermal printable disks.

Most of the printers are also only 4 color inks, and the one offs may be only 3 color like my Lexmark mod. To my knowledge all of the inkjet cd prnters use dye inks, maybe some of the professional machines use pigments.

Right now the best value seems to be the Epson 900, but you might want to wait a month or so because I have a feeling that you might see a price drop from the 900 soon. I also expect a pigment based disk printer from epson soon, but that might be my own wishful thinking.

All said and done, even my 35 dollar cheap POS Lexmark looks good on the disk. I would expect the others to not look any worse than that.

[golfnut]

the villageidiot, thank you for the detailed reply. Will the 900 allow me to print right on the disk, no labels involved, this is what I want to do. Thank you.

[The village idiot]

Yes the 900 and 950 will allow direct disk printing. Several people have them, mostly they are discussed in the MEDIA forum, but sometime in the computer forum too. They both also allow printing onto papers for the normal photo printer needs.

[golfnut]

Thank you for quick reply.