I have been asked about clear coating my printable DVDs for a while now. I never tried it and simply said, Please, don’t get your DVDs wet. It is not a good idea. But even when printable DVDs were not wet they could smear from simply being handled. I finally tried some Taiyo Yuden Water Sheild DVDs and they work great. They can be had for about $0.70 a DVD which is not too bad. The video shows a DVD that is about an hour old being put under running cold water and does not smear even when patted and rubbed with a paper towl. Very little ink came of at all on the paper towl and it did not smear on the DVD. It is worth noting that when held at certain angles you can see “strips” of clear coat unlike the usual matte finish. When casually looking the disk is nice and shiny and professional looking.
Pros:
- Locks in the Ink, even when wet
- Shiny finish
- No dry smudges
Cons:
- Cost 2x of other DVD-R media (~70 cents US per DVD)
- Only in CD-R and DVD-R Media
- Certain viewing angles reveal the clear coat strips down the media surface
I always use +R DVD’s is there a huge difference between the 2 formats. I usually make rips for my daughters and would hate to start giving them inferior products because I went from using DVD+R to DVD-R.
I use an Epson and have the capabilities of lowering the ink out.
No, for the most part any player that can play a “burned” DVD can usually play both +R and -R. -R in my experience used to be reported as being more compatible then +R in most cases.
Interesting to hear. I just tried to do the same to a DVD that is now nearly 3 months old and while the ink did lose a little “brightness” It did not run like you discribed.
Others at DVInfo.net have had similar experiences to what I have described:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=114464&highlight=Taiyo+Yuden
I might suggest trying to lower your ink ammount. I have mine well below the defualt level for my HP printer and it still looks amazing but uses far less ink which might help the results that I get. In the end I was just happy to have something that did not smudge when touched. If it requires a direct assualt on the disk in order to make the ink bleed that is still a good thing I think.
I bought a spindle of these a few months ago. I printed on them. One of which I kept out to take and show a friend. It was a week after I printed on it with my Epson R1800. While at the restaurant, I took a paper knapkin, soaked it in water and had zero trouble getting the ink the run right off the surface.
What made go looking for DVD-R media was a supplier of CDs for my company was using something (still haven’t determined the brand yet) and the ink looked like it was underneath the coating. What I printed has the ink on TOP of the coating.
I’m not impressed, even though the paper that came with the media said that it will work with any inkjet printer. I beg to differ.
The more you print on the disk the less noticeable they seem to be to me. The other thing is, when looking directly at a printed disk all you see is a nice shiny reflective disk that looks very professional. I have asked 5 people after showing them the DVDs and I asked if they noticed strips, one person found them when angling the DVD under some light the others had no clue what I was talking about. Either way, I think they are a big step up from the average matte finish of DVDs. One tip is to use less ink. My HP printer allows me to set the amount of ink used under advanced properties of the printer. It allows me to print more and it makes the disks dry even faster.
That is excellent. Would you say that the clear coat strips are noticeable to the average person?