Ink Jet Printable Media

[mpemba]

I'm a long time lurker, mostly because I'm not good enough to answer other peoples questions, but just good enough to get by on what is already posted.

There are a lot of scattered references to printable media here and there all over the site, in printer threads and the like, but what I would like is for people to talk about their printable media experiences. DVDr or CDr whichever.

Which are the shiniest period?
Which are the shiniest and most reliable?
What are silvers good for, does the ink come off easier on those?
Which are the shiniest, most reliable, and cheapest?
Good experiences with the shiny spray?
How do you not get any on the disk?
What are the best/cheapest/shiniest full-faces.

Basically, I'm looking to drop some cash on a nice big batch, and I'm looking for what I think we all are looking for, the ability to make a disc that someone would be like, "where did you have that made?", or for my backups, no one being able to spot that it's a dupe unless they have the original in front of them and a good bright light.

Looking around, it appears there is no such thing as the equivalent of high gloss photo-paper in CDr or DVDr. The silver sounds interesting though.

I understand a lot of this is personal preference, and I'm most likely going to buy a few small batches of a few different kinds before I make any big purchases, but I'd like to hear a few opinions first, if I could.

I'm sure other people must have some other questions too, I know I do, I just can't think of them this second and this post is already way to long.

[iooi]

I'm looking for what I think we all are looking for, the ability to make a disc that someone would be like, "where did you have that made?", or for my backups, no one being able to spot that it's a dupe unless they have the original in front of them and a good bright light.

Ok on this point you are off the mark as all they have to do is turn disk over and look at the side you burn....DEAD GIVE AWAY.....
I always do that when buying a disk that is well under the price you would expect to pay.
Personally i use Ritek GO4 printables and am more than happy with them. So long as the pic you are printing has plenty of white in it its as you say hard to tell the diffrence. Once you start laying down masses of dark colours then unless the source material is of high quality then you tend to get a bland finish, unless you want a disk that takes ages to dry and the ink comes off when you touch it with hands...
Full face one in the UK are not the easist to find but one brand i have tried is New Full Face Printable Datawrite (1x-4x) DVD-R ADVDINFO: .VDSPMSAB 01. They are on a par with the Riteks in terms of quality after printing.
Never used silver ones as once again over here in the UK they are hard to source and i aint paying over the odds just to try something new....
They would be nice where the manufactures have run out of ideas for the disk cover and just use silver with writing on it.....

[mpemba]

Thanks, I'll take a look at those.

As far someone being able to tell, I'm not trying to actually fool anybody, or sell them or anything, it would probably go like this. "Without turning the disc over to look at the write side, can you say which is the original and which one I made?", they would only get a few seconds, and there would be no florescent lights involved in the scenario.

I'm edging toward the full faces, I just think it looks cooler for like picture Cd's and stuff, it's nice to pick one out from the disk that is memorable of the time and doesn't have anything right in the middle.

[iooi]

Full faces look great when you have printed right up to the edge, but if any of it is left un printed then they do look odd with a white center. I tend to use both depending on what the label looks like.