lightscribe problem

[woodtogo]

I have a LG lightscribe burner, and SureThing Label maker, and Acoustica Label maker, but cannot burn a lightscribe disc. I have read all the instructions and I try to print as they say but my software does not recognize the lightscribe drive as it is supposed to. What am I doing wrong? when I choose print the only option I have is my default printer. Need help, please....Thnak-You

[aedipuss]

go to lightscribe.com and get the driver software, until it is installed l.s. won't work.

http://lightscribe.com/downloadsection/Windows/index.aspx?id=810

[jman98]

I want to warn you about Lightscribe. I started using it about 4 years ago as at that time, printers that could print directly to discs were insanely expensive, like $300 US or more. I used Lightscribe for a couple of years and was able to make some pretty nice labels with it. I have since turned against the format and do NOT recommend using it.

I ended up buying 3 different Lightscribe burners because each and every one eventually lost functionality. In every case the first thing to go was the ability to burn DL media successfully. This was followed by the loss of either the ability to burn CD or single layer DVDs (not both, but each drive lost the ability to burn one of these in addition to not being able to burn DL media). The ability to burn Lightscribe itself was retained on all burners. The manufacturers claim that burning Lightscribe won't shorten the life of your burner, but it did in every case for me. Others here have reported exactly the same thing as me - DL burning goes first followed by more problems.

The darkness of the burns is ALWAYS going to be an issue. Even if you burn at the darkest setting possible, which makes the burns take over 20 minutes, you will NEVER get a label that is really and truly dark enough. I read about some people who burned their labels twice to get them darker. I did that once and it certainly worked, but right after doing it, my drive lost the ability to burn DL media and just went downhill from there. I never again attempted to burn a label twice with Lightscribe and I still had problems with all my burners eventually. Note too that although this is also not supposed to happen that many of my Lightscribe labels are already showing signs of serious fading. My discs are all protected against temperature extremes and against direct sunlight yet quite a few of my disc labels have already started to fade and I think that in maybe another year or two will be completely unreadable.

Given the problems with the burners, the time it takes to burn each label (20+ minutes) and how the labels are never really dark enough and may fade with time, it is just insane in my opinion to bother with this format. A couple of years ago I bought a printer that could print directly to discs and I've been really happy with the results. What I get beats the crap out of the best that Lightscribe could do. Taiyo Yuden makes a Watershield line of DVD-R and CD-R discs that gives excellent results from ink jet printing and it's a much superior choice now.