Do you remember this little marketing slogan?
No?
Well, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised.
But I’m also a little sad.
That was one of the taglines of LightScribe, a direct-disc labeling technology developed
by Hewlett Packard and first released commercially in 2004.
What is it?
Well, it’s a really clever twist on an already common technology.
LightScribe used existing optical drive technology to burn monochrome images onto the label side
of optical media, either CDs or DVDs.
That’s right, it’s optical media time again here at Technology Connections, where
our mission is to stay timely and relevant.
*beeper noise*
Oh, excuse me I need to take this.
[to non-existent assistant offscreen] Uh, can I borrow your phone?
Jokes aside, I actually really, really like the idea of LightScribe, and I think it’s
an absolute shame that it didn’t take off.
We’ll soon see that it’s not too surprising it didn’t, but let me explain why I like
it so much.
LightScribe is a perfect example of my favorite kind of innovation.
Take a thing that currently does a thing, and make it do more things or different things!
At their core, LightScribe enabled optical drives are pretty much identical to any ordinary
CD or DVD burner.
See, you already have a high-powered laser that’s able to write readable data on a
little plastic frisbee, so why not use that same laser to burn images onto the other side
of that plastic frisbee?
And that’s roughly the exact question that Daryl Anderson, lead engineer of the LightScribe project,
probably asked when he first thought up the product maybe.
The bottom side of any writable optical disc is already a marvel of engineering, with heat-sensitive
dyes or even advanced polycrystalline alloys that darken when exposed to the heat created
by the laser light, therefore allowing tiny little marks to be burned into the surface.
These translate into the data that is actually on the disc.
If we’ve made materials that will get darker when exposed to intense laser light, what’s
to stop us from doing the same thing on the top side of the disc, for making an actual label?
Well, not much.
In fact, only a small modification was needed to turn an ordinary optical drive into a Lightscribe drive.
And you can see it just here.
This little doo-dad allows the drive to see the rotational position of the disc.
See, for writing data to a disc, its geometric position is pretty much irrelevant.
Molded into the plastic of the disc is a spiral pregroove containing the ATIP, which stands
for Absolute Time In Pregrrove.
This not only guides the laser as it writes data to a blank disc, but it also keeps the
disc spinning at the correct speed relative to the data being blasted onto it by the writing laser.
And staying at the correct speed is all that matters, really.
The data can be placed arbitrarily along the disc as far as its physical location goes,
and so long as it reproduces the correct sequence of zeros and ones, the correct data will be read.
However, to make an image using a single light source on a rotating disc, the disc’s exact
position needs to be determined.
This little guy works with the LightScribe media to do just that.
A LightScribe disc looks just like a regular disc, except the top is almost entirely devoid
of writing, save for a little bit of brand and format identification in the center ring.
But you’ll also see this little barcode looking thing between the spindle hole and
the writable portion of the disc.
When the disc is placed upside down in a LightScribe enabled drive, the barcode will line up with
that scanner thing.
Now the drive can know the disc’s absolute rotational position so it creates a proper image,
and not a spirally mess.
That barcode also encodes information about the label surface, which is pretty important
particularly because of the difference between CDs and DVDs.
Ah, let’s talk a little bit more about the disc itself.
The top surface of most lightscribe discs is this light tan color.
The color comes from the material used in the top coating, developed by Dr. Makarand Gore.
Just like the dye coating on the underside, this coating will get darker when it is heated
up by the laser.
But, it differs from the dye layer down below in that it gets much, much darker,
almost black.
Through a simple labeling utility, you can create simple text listings, or even beautiful
monochrome pictures like this one.
[pregnant pause]
Well now, this is beginning to highlight the problems of lightscribe, but before we get
too far down that particular rabbit hole, let’s take a look at how this works.
I’ve taken the cover off of this slim drive so we can see it in action.
I’m having it make a simple label with the word “Test”.
First, you can see the scanner activating to read the barcode on the inner ring.
Once I started the printing process, I was extremely surprised at how slowly the disc
spins when it’s being labeled.
Look at this!
This is nuts.
Luckily, we can see the laser shining through.
Notice how it flashes briefly at a higher intensity.
This is it burning the letters onto the disc.
What’s interesting here is that the laser is switched on at all times.
I’m not sure if any LightScribe drives were made that could only burn CDs, so I’m wondering
if we’re seeing the red laser diode for DVDs burn with a steady glow, and the flashing
is the high intensity infrared laser diode blasting the disc with energy.
♫ low fidelity guitar music ♫
Perhaps we’re only seeing one or the other,
♫ the music returns briefly ♫
but in either case, this suggests that the drive is actually looking at the surface of the disc, perhaps
simply for focus, or maybe it actually checks what it’s laid down.
Whatever it’s doing, I still can’t get over how slowly the disc is spinning!
That’s a surprise.
But maybe not.
I’ll explain in a bit.
With the disc completed, we can now take it out and sure enough, there’s the word “Test”
just like we expected.
But there’s more weirdness in the LightScribe universe.
Like the stark difference between CDs and DVDs.
I’ve created a basic label and I’ve burned the same thing onto a CD-R and a DVD-R. You
might notice that they look mostly similar, but the DVD label is almost...
blurry looking.
This is an odd quirk in the Lightscribe universe, as DVDs and CDs were made very differently.
Well, OK, all DVDs and CDs are made differently.
In a CD, the data layer is actually barely below the label side of the disc.
The laser in a CD player is shining through almost the entire thickness of the disc before
the reflective surface bounces it back.
But in a DVD, the data layer is actually in the middle of the disc.
You can see this even with standard DVD movies--the disc has a seam down the middle, as it’s
made in two halves.
CD’s don’t have this seam, as they are a single sheet of polycarbonate.
Now for some reason, in LightScribe DVDs, the label coating isn’t simply placed on
the top of the disc.
Instead, it’s sandwiched between a top clear layer and the data layer beneath it.
And this is why a LightScribe drive needs to know if this is a DVD or a CD--the drive
will focus at different depths depending on which type of media is used.
This always struck me as kinda odd, as what’s to stop them from putting the same CD-style
label coating on the actual top of a standard DVD-R?
Putting it in the middle like this meant that all LightScribe DVD labels looked a little
soft compared to those of CDs, however it does appear to increase contrast slightly
between light and dark, but that could simply be down to the particular discs I’ve got here.
That said, there was an advantage to this.
Firstly, the label surface is more protected in a LightScribe DVD because it’s not exposed.
And secondly, a fairly common occurrence with LightScribe media is for a white powder to
form on top of the black portions of the label.
This was simply a side-effect of the burning process and it was purported to be a harmless
crystallization of the label layer, however it would get on your fingers if you touched
it and wasn’t really pleasant looking on the disc.
With a DVD, that happened much less frequently due to the protected and sealed nature of
the label, and even if it did, at least the powder wouldn’t get all over your fingers.
So, how do you actually create a LightScribe label?
Well first, you need to make sure that you have both LightScribe media and a LightScribe
enabled optical drive, plus the necessary LightScribe system utilities and some sort
of program for creating labels like this Nero Smart Essentials thing.
You know, easy.
But assuming you have all of that ready to go, it’s pretty simple.
The Nero software is about as user-friendly as can be for 2004-ish, and it does something
that at first seems really really weird, but you will quickly learn is totally understandable.
I’ll add a text box and as soon as I do so, that box becomes a…
crescent?
Erm, OK.
Well, from here, I have a pretty good degree of customization.
I can choose my typeface, its font size, bold and italics, its justification and all that,
just like a basic word processor.
And then I hit OK, and it gets wrapped around that crescent thing.
Well, I can turn that off by unselecting the “Bend” checkbox, and now things look a
little more normal.
Let’s just do some quick customization here, maybe add a little something extra, and now
I think that’s a delightful design, worthy of a LightScribe label.
So now, I’ll grab my CD which already has my Awesome Mix 2006 on it, and I’ll pop
it upside-down into the drive.
I can now burn the label.
So, I hit the little button, and now I can select between “Draft, Normal, and Best”.
I can even get a preview of what this will look like on the finished disc, a handy little feature.
Of course, I don’t settle for less than the best, so I’ll hit Best, and now here’s
where LightScribe’s weaknesses really come into play.
It tells me this will take about 15 minutes.
Well, that’s a lie right there.
This is gonna take more like 23 to 25 minutes.
Yeah, LightScribe is anything but fast.
But that’s not unexpected.
Remember one of its design goals was to avoid reinventing the wheel and use existing optical
drive technology.
And for the most part it did.
But, let’s think for a moment how limiting that was.
The laser in a CD burner is normally focusing its power onto a microscopic spot, so all
of its power becomes concentrated and realistically the laser doesn’t need to be all that powerful.
But if we’re trying to draw with it, we don’t want it to be focused onto a microscopic
point that we can’t see.
When burning a label, a LightScribe drive actually defocuses the laser so that the point
it’s burning is larger (and actually visible).
But that means that the disc has to travel more slowly,
as we now know, WAY MORE SLOWLY,
because with a less concentrated spot, the energy is more spread out, and the laser can’t
heat the label as quickly.
Bummer.
And, because the drives were only lightly modified from standard optical drives, the
discs could only spin in one direction.
That might not seem like a limitation, but that’s precisely why the label-making program
would bend the text by default.
See, the time it takes to burn a label is directly dependent on the range from the inside
boundary to the outside circumference that is being used.
And by being used, I mean AT ALL.
Even if just a thin line is drawn from here to here, the label will take 25 minutes to create.
This is because it can’t just rock the disc back and forth to make that line.
It burns the label just like it burns data, so it has to follow a spiral starting from
the inside boundary and going all the way to the outside edge.
Remember that Test label?
It spent the majority of the time with the laser off, and because it can’t just skip
the blank parts of the label, it takes a long time to write just a single word.
But the drive CAN skip blank sections along the disc’s radius.
So, if you bend the text into a ring, then only this region is actually being used.
So the drive can skip all this, burn from here to here, and then it’s done.
And here’s how that comes into play.
This disc here, even though it’s just a small amount of text, took about 25 minutes
to make.
The text gets very close to the inside edge, and continues almost all the way to the outside edge.
So even though none of this space is being used, the laser still had to travel over all of it.
But this disc, with much more written information, only took about 10 minutes.
All of the text is contained between these two boundaries, so the inside portion could
be skipped, and the drive didn’t need to burn anything past here.
So, to save time, the program is always going to encourage you to bend the text like this,
as these labels can me made in as little as 5 minutes.
If you’re OK with 12 point font, this can get down to 2.
With that limitation, though, how attractive is the system, really?
Sure, this is more legible than a sharpie, but if you want to make …
professional looking labels like this,
you’ll be spending at least 15 minutes each go, and probably more.
You could save some time by selecting either the “draft” or “normal” settings,
but those sacrifice burn intensity and/or resolution and will produce a lighter image.
And the lengthiness of the burn process isn’t the only weakness.
You may have noticed how low-contrast this atrocity was.
Ignoring the fact that it’s a monochrome image
(c’mon, we’re not making miracles here)
this is a rather low-contrast affair even when burned on the “best” setting.
LightScribe looks pretty good with black text, but introduce images and things get less optimal.
In order to look their best on a LightScribe label, the image should be adjusted to have
borderline extreme contrast, an adjustment that is unfortunately omitted
from this labeling utility.
And the image quality concerns don’t stop there.
Look a little more closely at these labels and you’ll see that the text isn’t entirely
aligned right.
There is a slight shifting going on at many points.
Some of this is likely down to my particular LightScribe drive, but the format was prone
to this happening from time to time.
I’ve even had a few discs come out as a complete mess,
likely due to a dirty barcode ring.
This is real, by the way, this is supposed to have words on it.
And here’s one image abnormality that’s appeared on every single LightScribe disc
I’ve ever made.
You can see the actual spiral pattern of the laser’s travel in solidly dark portions.
Of course, I think that’s pretty neat but let’s be honest, it’s a flaw.
You’re probably thinking of another flaw to LightScribe that kept it from reaching
mass popularity: Cost.
LightScribe drivers were probably stupid expensive, and the discs?
Pfft, waste of money.
Actually, no.
The drives themselves were barely any more expensive than standard drives.
Even in the early days, there were plenty of LightScribe enabled drives that actually
cost less than standard drives from some competing manufacturers.
Remember, there’s not much different about a LightScribe drive, and HP was happy to license
it to many manufacturers.
By 2005, 6 different drive manufacturers had signed on to make LightScribe drives.
And the media was a bit more expensive than standard blank media,
but honestly not by much.
Assuming you were sticking to mainstream brands and not bargain basement specials, an equivalent
LightScribe disc from the same manufacturer was only about 20 to maybe 50% more expensive.
It’s hard to make a comparison now because LightScribe is pretty much dead, but I recall
that a spindle of 50 LightScribe DVDs was about $30, and CDs were between $22 and $25.
Honestly that seemed very reasonable to me, especially because there’s an added cost
to either paper labels or inkjet-printable CDs.
Oh, paper labels.
Ugh.
How I hated paper labels.
That was the single greatest advantage of LightScribe in my eyes, as they worked great
in cars.
A CD with a paper label never behaves too nicely with the slot loading players in cars
or many Apple products back when they included optical drives
and headphone jacks.
LightScribe discs just looked great without any compatibility issues, and everyone who
I ever gave one to was impressed with them.
So really, it’s just a little sad that no one cared to use them more.
But, I understand.
A sharpie and a cheap CD is pretty sufficient, particularly since so many burned discs were
just throwaway affairs to begin with.
And there were still more problems with LightScribe.
The label surface is pretty susceptible to wear (in CDs anyway), and it can fade quickly
if left in direct sunlight or exposed to extreme heat, and over a period of years the label
will fade regardless unless cared for.
They can last a long time if cared for, though.
These backup discs for my netbook (that’s right, netbook, remember those?) are around
7 or 8 years old now and the labels look fine.
Granted, these are DVDs with the inherent protection of the top surface layer.
Where is LightScribe today?
Officially deceased.
You knew it was coming, didn’t you?
HP officially ended LightScribe support in 2013 by removing its website and even going
so far as to say “you can find the software you need somewhere else, not here.”
And while you can still get LightScribe drives and media, it’s pretty much new old stock
only at this point.
Today, you can find the LightScribe utilities you may need at lightscribesoftware.org, a
website run by Steve Nelson who is really going out of his way to keep LightScribe support
going.
And indeed, I owe him thanks, as I needed to download the system utility to make the
discs for this video.
But before it died, LightScribe was improved by offering discs in other colors, but that
was about all the innovation it ever received.
If they could have gotten a full label done in 5 minutes, I think it would have fared better.
But then again, that would probably require a much stronger laser than what’s in a garden
variety optical drive, making the drive much more expensive, and further limiting appeal.
Oh well, it was neat while it lasted.
Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed this look into what I honestly feel like is perhaps
the most underappreciated development in optical disc history.
I don’t know what could have been done to make LightScribe a little more popular because
let’s face it, how often did you even want to make a nice label for your angsty mixes?
And if you needed to make discs professionally, it’s just far too slow and by that point
you would be wiser to invest in some sort of screen printing setup or even just having
ordering discs to be commercially pressed.
It was always going to be a niche product, even though it was pretty neat.
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Thanks for your consideration, and I’ll see you next time.
And now, the outtro music.
♫ suspiciously smooth jazz ♫
A bonus fact about LightScribe: Because of that barcode thing, the disc actually has
a natural orientation.
This means you can add something to an already labeled disc simply by burning something onto
it in the unused area.
So, my Awesome Mix 2006 can be amended with a warning for non-awesome people.
Also, this allowed you to burn the same label again, which would make it a little darker,
but with repeated burns slight alignment errors would compound and make the image increasingly
blurry.
LightScribe was not the first direct-disc labeling product, nor would it be the last.
In 2002, Yamaha had developed the disturbingly named DiscT@2 (pronounced “Disc Tattoo”)
--uh that’s terrible--
which could etch a sorta-label on the bottom side of a CD or
DVD in the unused data portion.
Um, lots of problems there, you can’t use it unless the disc isn’t anywhere near full,
the “label” is on the bottom side so not really a label, and also these weren’t radically
easy-to-see because the dye layer isn’t meant for that.
Nevertheless, it was briefly a thing, but had very little support.
NEC would later use Yamaha’s patent on DiscT@2
(seriously, that’s an awful name)
to create LabelFlash, which was a direct competitor to LightScribe.
This came out in 2006, with the discs having a bright blue label on top.
It fared even worse than LightScribe, probably because it was a later format with less manufacturer
support, the discs were way more expensive than LightScribe media (like 2 or 3 times
more expensive) and it also was limited to DVDs only.
And I’ll leave you with something that I can’t demonstrate unless smell-o-vision
takes off.
LightScribe media has a very distinctive odor.
Crack open a fresh spindle of LightScribe discs and you’ll be greeted with a not-unpleasant
but certainly unnatural mild chemical smell.
The best way to describe it is, I think, musty crayons.
Yeah, it’s a little musty but also plasticy and like hot wax.
Musty crayons.
I actually kinda like it, but I have a feeling it’s not exactly healthy.