Lite-On announces 18x Lightscribe DVD burner

We're still waiting for Lite-On's 20x DVD burner, but if you're looking for speed and laser-etched disc labeling to boot, the company's got just the fix for ya. Lite-On's just-announced LH-18A1H Lightscribe drive will give you a still-respectable 18x burning speed for DVD+R and DVD-R discs, although it'll still take decidedly longer to label the disc than it does to actually burn it. Other disc burning speeds are about what you'd expect, with 48x for CD-R, 32x for CD-RW, and between 6x and 12x for the remaining writable DVD formats. This one's being offered to OEMs right now, with a Lite-On branded model set to go on sale in Taiwan for about $64. According to Lite-On, Lightscribe-enabled drives account for just 10% of the company's optical disc drive business, something that HP (purveyor of all things Lightscribe) looks to be doing its best to increase, recently announcing that it's lowering its royalty charge for manufactures by between 40 and 50%, depending on volume. Guess it takes some drastic measures when you're taking on the powerhouse of the optical disc labeling industry: the Sharpie.

[Via TG Daily]

[David @ Sep 28th 2006 3:13AM]

When lightscribe supports color I will care about it... if it's going to be black and white it will never be a match for the sharpie!

[Paul @ Sep 28th 2006 6:38AM]

Also there is the fact that last time I checked a single lightscribe dvd costs as much as the sharpie, heh

[JC @ Sep 28th 2006 9:16AM]

At least the burners are reasonably priced now. Just think of having a regular DVD burner sitting around, BUT, when you need to make that killer mix CD (not mix tape any more, alas) for that cute new girl in homeroom, it'll come in handy.

[moni @ Sep 28th 2006 2:00PM]

I've had great luck w/ lightscribe cdr/dvdr.

I'm not sure how fast mine is, but it burns a "normal" quality in about 15 minutes depending on the artwork. It goes a long way to making a simple CDR not look amateur-hourish.

Every time I've given anyone a lightscribe disk, the reaction has always been "wow!" That's a very good thing imo.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of these out in the wild.

[raulr @ Sep 28th 2006 3:18PM]

Works fine for me too. It's just slow. I burn at Normal quality 2x for each disc. When I simply burn it once, even at best quality, it's too faint. Burning the image twice gives really good contrast. The discs are too expensive though. I think getting one of the Epson printers that print direct to CD/DVD disks is a much cheaper option with a much better COLOR image.

[J.R. @ Sep 29th 2006 8:39AM]

Raulr,

If you go to lightscribe.com, they have a firmware update that adds scribing time to your choices. The fast one becomes normal, normal becomes best, and best becomes something additional, which is what I now use. It works very well, aside from the (of course) additional time required to scribe the disc. It's also completely reversible.

[Sam @ Sep 28th 2006 5:35PM]

Why is this news? Samsung is already shipping an 18x drive with lightscribe, available online for $30.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827151136

[Nate MC @ Oct 1st 2006 6:39PM]

I like this lightscribe stuff, yeah its like burning a CD back in the 2X days but the art is pretty cool looking, especially after the updated drivers you can install to get even darker prints. I hope it catches on only because I would love to see this technology advance dramatically and could use more R&D dollars.

[ArcSine @ Nov 4th 2006 10:27AM]

Lightscribe should've never left the lab. First, it took me roughly an hour to get the drivers and imaging software working, and I'm a professional storage engineer. Doesn't install as a printer driver, Photoshop plugin, or integrate in any way with existing software, we're talking 100% proprietary. Then, HALF AN HOUR to burn the image, not to mention flipping the disc (which threw me right back to 1983, flipping my C-64 floppies)... And it didn't frickin' work. Just random swirls on the top of my CDR. Lovely.

[Divine @ Apr 30th 2007 6:33PM]

If you're a professional storage engineer and you couldn't get Lightscribe working properly, I'd take a moment to rethink your chosen career - I'm just a humble technical support engineer and I got it working in about 10 mins.

Completely agree with you re: lack of photoshop plug-ins - that's a deal-breaker as far as I am concerned...

[mark @ Jul 2nd 2007 2:12PM]

I just bought the 20x lite-on lightscribe. What a joke! The burner is lightsribe ready but the lightscribe LSS from HP doesn't support it. The burner works fine but nothing recognises it as a lightscribe drive. All drivers installed as lightscribe helpdesk advised! firmware updated from lite-on still nothing. Tried older versions of the lightscribe system files but no joy.

This is the problem with relying on two or more providers each will blame the other, i.e lite-on will say it is lightscribe ready and HP will say it's not supported yet! so i guess I will have to wait for the drive to be supported.

P.S the LSS and lightscribe from lightscribe website wouldn't install on my emachine 220! I was advised by support to download the drivers from Nero as they install better? They worked fine. You even have to download an unistall program from lightscribe site to remove the registry entries as you can't get rid of it once installed. http://download.lightscribe.com/ls/LssUninstall.exe