Amazing dvd / blu-ray printer for your GH1 discs.

Blackout

Blackout

Veteran
Just picked up an Epson Artisan 710 from newegg.com for the incredible price of $100 and I got some taiyo yuden glossy waterproof print all the way to the hub dvd-r media and optical quantum bd-r .

I have owned many printers and several cd/dvd versions of epsons but 'blown away' does not do justice to what the discs look like.

Better than commercial discs and smudge and water and humidity proof and nothing like the old matte finish memorex discs on my old epson printer.

Seriously.... holy crap.

I dropped a clients finished project off and they asked how much it cost to get a 1 off "pressed" like I did....

That's impressive.

The printer is 5000+ dpi, 6 cartridge individual ink, wifi, a scanner, copier, amazing photo prints, cd/dvd/blu-ray, will charge usb devices as well as accept any card and print without a computer... for $100... mind boggling.... the only downside is epson ink is expensive but you can mod the printer to take a continues tube system if you plan on doing massive printing.

It's the best image I have ever seen on a home made or commercial disc bar none.

Just thought I would give the heads up here... for $100 it was a total steal.


Also picked up a samsung 7200 1000 gig (1 terabyte) drive for $60 bucks...
both items had free shipping and work fantastic.

Here's the link with discount codes if it helps anyone out:

http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemail/Aug-0-2010/labordayL34E/index-landing.html
 
Nice printer! I wish they had come out with that a while back when I needed a new all-in-one...AND a new disc printer! I ended up buying both...wasting desk space, and replacing two different kinds of cartridges.

I tried the TY Watershields a few years back, and immediately got playback complaints on the first wedding I sent out on them. So I went back to regular TY premium inkjet hub-printables, which I've never had compatibility problems with after burning thousands. They do look nice, however. But for my cheap-o weddings...not worth the extra cost...IMHO. I don't think my clients care what the discs look like, and one single compatibility complaint grinds my business to a screeching halt...blowing my profit margins on the project. I kept the remaining Watershields for my home videos. :D
 
The 800 is actually older technology than the 710. I wouldn't go for that.

Yes, it has the CD/DVD/BD-R printer and whats great is that this time they got it right and it's IN the printer, not a clunky extra thing you have to insert and line up.

Just hit the CD print key and boom, a secret bat cave like disc panel pops out.

Not to mention PHOTO still right off the SD card of the GH1 are fantastic as well....

Haven't had any playback or burn issues. The GLOSSY discs look SO much better than the white mat and the don't smudge if god forbid a lil drop of water hits it.
 
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The 710 is a great printer. I've had mine for a year now and I bought it direct from epson free shipping for $160. The first time I printed out a DVD with a photo on the disc it just blew me away - and that was with the matte finish. The glossy watershields are amazing. Ink runs thru it quickly but I picked up some refillable cartridges from ebay with the refill ink for dirt cheap - haven't had to refill them once from earlier this year, backup ink bottles are still full. I choose not to get the CIS because I don't print out that many discs just a few hundred a year and I didn't like the routing of the ink feed tubes.

What really surprised me was the scanning speed of photos. Epson scanner is now gathering dust - I'll still keep it cause it can still scan slides and negatives. My router is in the basement and I'm on the second floor and everything is scanned or printed in seconds. My printer is less than three feet from my workstation but since the other computers use it for printing on a wireless network it must also be on wireless. I've had issues with my network early this year and at times I couldn't print out docs even though the printer is right next to my computer. It needs to be either all wired or all wireless not a combo of both.

Also it will do two side printing automatically - no switching pages backwards upside down in and out of the paper tray. This is great for printing out contracts, now no multi page documents , everything is now the fine print on the back of the doc.

Printing DVDs is a breeze - the drawer slides out at a push of a button and printing is pretty quick. I do simple design for my DVDs so Epsons Print CD software works fine for me. For the case cover I make a montage of SD video stills and as long as I don't scale the images up to large the prints come out great.
 
Blackout said:
...Yes, it has the CD/DVD/BD-R printer and whats great is that this time they got it right and it's IN the printer, not a clunky extra thing you have to insert and line up.

Just hit the CD print key and boom, a secret bat cave like disc panel pops out....
Click to expand...

I REALLY like that! I'm currently using the R280 for DVD's, so you have to reposition the front loader thingy, line up the tray, then cross your fingers that it doesn't just spit it back out. :D


Blackout said:
...Haven't had any playback or burn issues. The GLOSSY discs look SO much better than the white mat and the don't smudge if god forbid a lil drop of water hits it.
Click to expand...

The TY Watershields should be a huge improvement over the Memorex DVD's you were using. I burned several hundred Memorex (among every other brand I could find), and their compatibility was dreadful. Those were the dark ages of being in the video business for me. :cry:

Sort of as a joke, I even took a regular TY (non-Watershield) DVD, ran it under the kitchen sink, and could not get the color to smudge. It took constant running water and a plastic fork to smudge the ink! I posted pictures of the whole goofy test over at VU.

I even remember me and a bunch of others spraypainting our DVD's with clear laquer, to make them look more like pressed movies and make them more water resistant (before Watershields). What a monumental waste of time! But in those days, I know I'd look for any excuse to step away from my huge editing backlog. :cheesy:

I've been SO tempted to try Watershields again...they look so nice...and hoping the burning softwares, firmwares, players, and discs have improved enough to minimize compatibility issues. But the costs of playback complaints are so big, I haven't been brave enough to try.

Now I've had a couple of clients say their Blu-Ray's won't play, and after investigation (asking what model they have and Googling), am finding the issues are with some first release (1.0) Blu-Ray players that won't play BD-R...despite it being in their spec's. So I'm thinking it's DVD issues all over again. But fortunately, I don't think their were a LOT of early adopters with BD, and hopefully NOT a huge amount of 1.0 BD players out there.
 
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I can't tell you how much I LOOOOOVE this printer. I haven't felt such love since I picked up the GH!... oh and that one time.. with my first girlfriend.... but more about the printer..

I just printed with some verbatim 16x dvd-r aquajet glossy printables and HOLLLY CRAP! They look even better... I have never seen such a quality print on a cd/dvd/blu-ray in my life.... it's as clear as the high end glossy photo paper!!!

Amazing amazing machine... you can have all different sized photo paper and regular paper loaded at the same time..... it prints on BOTH sides.... it recognizes dvds and cds when you put them in the scanner and will copy the image perfectly onto a blank cd without even touching the computer! Print right of of the GH1s sd card without computer are amazing even with no photoshop retouching.... better than any photos I have ever got back from any lab... evr...

Did I tell you I love this printer?
 
that's a nice find but does it due blu ray due to the extra thickness? I have the microboards print factory 1 and it duplicates CD/DVD like a dream with a 50 disk capacity but this was developed before blu ray and they are too thick to properly feed and I don't want to kill a good earner... I might have to pick this up to do small runs of blu ray.. I've done 10K disks and doing that by hand would be a killer.. I did 1500 one at a time some time back and that was like a sweat shop...

cheers for finding this... not bad at all.... Does it also take store bought ink?
 
Some information about ink-jet printers that may be of interest:

There are 2 different technologies ink-jet printers use to put ink on paper (or whatever they are printing on.) The technologies are heat and piezo-electric nozzles.

Piezo-electric is a phenomenon of some crystals to generate electric current when they are twisted, or, vice-versa, to twist when electric current is applied to them. Many early phonographs/record players used piezo-electric mechanisms to transform waves in the record grooves to electric signals that got amplified into sound. The phono needle was attached to a piezo-electric crystal and wires from the crystal went straight to the audio amp.

The other technology is heat. Some ink-jet printers have printheads with heaters in them. The heaters literally boil the ink and this forces a jet of atomized ink out of the printhead and onto the paper.

Epson printers use the piezo-electric technology. Canon and HP printers use the heat method. There has been great controversy over these 2 techniques for many years. Both work well most of the time but each has its own drawbacks.

In general piezo-electric printheads can suffer from clogged heads, and heat printheads can burn out. The latter is one reason given for Canon printers not being able to print longer than 13"; the stated reason is the printhead would get too hot. (Personally I don't believe this; I think the reason is that Canon doesn't make roll paper for its printers like Epson does.)

Clogged heads results from ink drying in the printhead and clogging the holes through which it is supposed to pass. My sense is Epson printers are more prone to this problem because the amount of pressure generated by piezo-electric heads is less than that generated by the heat-type heads and this there is a higher liklihood of ink being left in the printhead.

Both types of printers have sensors that will use alternate ink jet openings in the printheads if a clog does happen. Also, both types of printers have cleaning cycles that attempt to clear clogged heads.

My first photo printer was an Epson 13" wide-carriage with roll-feed attachment. It produced spectacular prints. I was using so much ink I got a continuous feed system with external ink tanks. You have to use 3rd party ink with such a setup and over time I ended up with some un-fixable clogged heads that can only be replaced by an Epson repair center. I did this once ($220) and when it happened again I opted to switch to a Canon photo printer.

My Canon (model i9900) is several years old now and has never had a single clogged head. It produces prints even better than the Epson did - specifically it does much better with dark shadow detail such as hair. I attribute this to a batter printer driver (which Epson may have fixed by now.)

I have never run a cleaning cycle on the Canon printer - not even once. (Cleaning cycles frequently work, but they consume a lot of ink.) The Canon will not print panoramas, but I now print those using a local photo lab that prints using a commercial LightJet printer (which is the best printer out there.)

One nice thing about the Canon printers is that the printhead is user-replaceable. In the case of HP printers, the printheads are built in to the actual ink cartridges, so you get a new printhead each time you change the ink cartridge.

One final note: I read somewhere that the most expensive commercially available liquid is ink-jet printer ink. I'm not sure if this is true, but it might be. Talk abotu razors and razor blades.......
 
+1 for the epsons
here in ex-snowy old UK ive got the 720, and as Blackout says its a fantastic piece of kit for the money. My clients are very impressed too (and that's what counts folks)
 
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