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Take a close look at your work space.  Don’t stop there; move on to your collection of CDs and DVDs.  Quickly estimate how many of these items have been created by you on a computer.  Precious photographs, backed up data that could prove invaluable in the case of a system crash, or legally downloaded music tracks from your favourite on-line store could well account for most, if not all, of these home-produced disks.

 Now think for a moment about how you identify each of these items.  Do you use a marker pen, maybe a sticky label is used (of course on the case rather than the disk itself), or maybe you have worked out your own method?  Whatever your chosen route is, it probably lacks the professional touch in its appearance.  Fortunately, technology being what it is, help is now available.

Hewlett Packard, in its invent guise, has put on its thinking cap and come up with a technology entitled LightScribe Direct Disc Labelling.  Luckily this rather long title has been abbreviated to a more reasonable LightScribe as it could well become an integral part of CD and DVD drives that are going to appear over the coming months.  Believing that LightScribe could become, maybe not the best thing since sliced bread but somewhere near, a must-have feature for discerning users, and also to ensure it is quickly accepted as a standard by the industry, HP has made the technology available with an open license granted to any manufacturer that wishes to incorporate it into their products.  HP firmly believes that the LightScribe technology should have no, or little, effect on the costing of units using the technology.

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But just what is LightScribe?  As the technology’s full title indicates LightScribe is a way of enabling CDs and DVDs to have a professionally looking label etched onto the media.  As the HP inspired slogan suggests you “Burn, Flip, Burn”.  Basically just three components are required for the technology to work.  First you need a LightScribe enabled drive.  This provides the capability to burning the data on the disk in the normal manner.  You then turn the disk over and appropriate labelling information, in the form of a title, logo and anything else you want if burned on to the reverse side of the disk.

Of course for the drive to be able to perform this feat the media will need to be LightScribe enabled.  Unlike a normal disk, the LightScribe version, easily recognisable by a bar code and LightScribe logo, has a thin dye layer that replace the usual top coating.  This dye absorbs the laser light, so triggering a chemical reaction that produces a change to the disk’s surface.  Alterations to the focusing and power of the light will be handled automatically by the drive.  Initially this change is limited to monochrome, although plans are in motion to have colour in the future.  The resulting image is classified as silk-screen quality, or high resolution to you and me. 

Bringing these two elements together will be LightScribed enabled software.  Generally this will form part of CD and DVD burning software that we already use for the creation of our disks.  Built-in to the software will be an option to add your own label.  You can then use templates to design various lay-out with any graphics you wish.  As the technology only supports monochrome at present it is relatively easily to add new or remove items at a later date.  Depending upon the amount of data to be burned, the process could take between 3 and 28 minutes.

HP is already poised to release selected PCs that will incorporate a LightScribe drive.  The T series will be the first models to benefit from the technology and the computers will include LightScribe enhanced software from Sonic, Intervideo and a version of iTunes for creating music CDs.  HP will be including two of their blank media disks in the package.  Prices for the T series range from £740 to £1,110 and will then be followed by the HP Media Centre system.  HP plans to release an internal and external LightScribe drive for those wishing to upgrade their systems to take advantage of the new technology.  I will be reviewing two of these drives at a later date.

As well as HP, several other companies have already committed themselves to various aspects of the LightScribe initiative.  With regards to drive manufacturers you should be seeing products from BenQ, LaCie, Philips, Hitachi-LG, Lite-ON Toshiba and Samsung.  Software applications with LightScribe capabilities will be available from sources that include Nero, Roxio and Sonic Solutions.  Verbatim already has media available and will be joined shortly by Imation, Memorex and TDK.

So may the force be with you as labelling becomes an integral part of the disk burning process.

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