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when I started my first video production company in late 2001, my first video productions went straight to VHS. But by 2002, DVDs accounted for almost 50% of sales. The production house that made our VHS dubs printed our very basic spine and face labels for us, but when it came to duplicating DVDs, we were already starting to hear rumblings about problems with sticky labels, especially on DVDs.
We decided we needed a better way of labeling our discs, and Epson was still another year away from introducing inkjet printers that had disc trays. I even purchased a rubber stamp and special ink for nonporous surfaces that would at least allow me to brand our DVDs with our company logo, but I was disappointed with the results. Eventually, I came across thermal printing and have been hooked ever since. I couldn't afford a thermal printer at the time, and my volume back then didn't warrant owning such a specialized printer. But as the volume of DVDs I duplicated increased from all the stage productions I was producing, a thermal printer made it higher and higher up my wish list until it made it to the top, last month, when I finally took the plunge and purchased a Rimage Prism Plus Autoprinter.
THERMAL VS. INKJET
Thermal printing is different from inkjet or laser printing. Whereas inkjet printing applies tiny droplets of liquid ink to the print media and laser printing applies powder toner, thermal printing is a heat-and-pressure transfer of ink resins from a ribbon. The process reminds me of my first plain paper fax machine that used a similar technology: For faxes, it was expensive to use, but the advantage was that unlike fax paper rolls that faded over time, thermal transfer printing was long-lasting.
The same benefit holds for thermal printing on discs, which doesn't fade, smudge, or require drying time. As a technology for printing on discs, thermal printing actually has a lower cost per disc than inkjet technology, especially when you factor the increase in cost for inkjet-printable media (or sticky labels if you still use them).
OUTSOURCING VS. IN-HOUSE PRINTING
One of the advantages of outsourcing my printing was that I didn't incur any overhead, but there was also a...