dvd duplicating equipment

[Walter Biscardi]

[Lynne Desjardins] “Any new ideas?”

I don’t have any right now. We use the Medley for things that don’t require a high quality print and we use our old Epson printer for high quality printing.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Tim Robinson]

COPY TIME
Lynne, for me I can almost predict when things are done. We have the Bravo XR with the front kiosk tray. So it can hold 50 inside and spit out all 50. Then it needs to be manually reloaded. (I know they make bigger ones).

I can do 50 overnight no problem. In a day… depending on the size, full DVD’s… 50 would take about 4-5 hours. CD’s… 1-2 (IF FULL!), but most CD’s and DVD’s I do aren’t, so their done pretty quickly.

So a 1,000 DVD’s, with manual load delays and overnight printing, would take approx 8 business days M-F… much less if the DVD’s aren’t full.

But I believe they make faster machines now!

PRIMERA CUSTOMER SERVICE
Personally I’ve had repair issues in the past year and every time I always got someone on the phone quickly and that same person would follow up and respond often by email to any other questions I had. The DVD drive just wore out after years of use.

COST OF INK
The most costly things with Bravo’s is the ink. Since you have to buy THAT ink. I get everything from cdrom2go.com and their catalog has $10 off $100 coupons, so I save every time I reorder. Not sure if there’s any on the market that use name brand cartridges.. which could mean savings at staples or with ink refills. I haven’t tried ink refilling of these cartridges, but I’d had bad experiences in the past with that (leaks, failures) and since the printer is right above the duplicator and part of the “robot” I don’t want to mess the entire machine up.

I of course am not in the market for a new machine since this one works, I’m sure since we bought it years ago (before my time) there are better ones by now.

Just my 2 cents.

Tim Robinson
tim@erobinsons.com
Pride-Mobility-Products
Corporate Video Editor

[Tim Robinson]

I believe DVD-9 is the defacto “Dual layer” DVD size (since DVD-9 = Single Sided Dual Layer 12cm diam 8.54 GB size…. and DVD-5 (the next size down) is your standard 4.7 single sided, single layer DVD!)

So I would safely assume that if the drive can do dual layer DVD’s, DVD-9’s fall into that category! You won’t typically find DVD compatibility listed this way DVD-9 DVD-5 DVD-2 etc.

FYI DVD-9 is also the standard for PlayStation 2 games!

Here’s a wikipedia article that goes into detail…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD

Tim Robinson
tim@erobinsons.com
Pride-Mobility-Products
Corporate Video Editor

[Lynne Margulies]

Thank you for all the info. I’m in such a quandary now because I’m anticipating having to do blu-rays in the near future. I might go with strictly the Bravo XR (and Tim, I hope they DO go faster now, I’ll check) and wait until after I go to NAB to consider what other duplicator to get. *sigh*

I talked to a friend who has three Bravos and he swears by them, but it sounds like you need three to produce any volume!

Lynne Desjardins

[Tim Robinson]

I know Bravo offers a blu-ray model but I believe the blu-ray side was only 2x and it was expensive. You can always “upgrade” later with the Bravo models by sending it in to Primera when you really need to do blu-ray, by then the drives will hopefully cheaper and the speed faster.

When it comes to MASSIVE CD/DVD runs, I always source it out because it’s actually cheaper, faster and less hassle. I use http://www.discmakers.com for that. The color printing of either jackets/cases/covers is also a great benefit over doing the labels yourself.

Either way… Good luck!

Tim Robinson
tim@erobinsons.com
Pride-Mobility-Products
Corporate Video Editor