Well, this is my first blog entry and it's about time I join the rest of the folks out here.
Ok... Here goes....
About two years ago, myself and my producer went to NAB to research the cool products that were coming out. One thing that we were interested in looking at was a DVD duplicator. Now.... we are a small company that has large ideas.
So as you can imagine, making DVDs on a budget is a challenge. We already had computers with DVD burners. Now, we needed a printer. I purchased an Epson printer that could print CD/DVDs. This worked great BUT it took a while to make ten complete discs. And I had a project coming up that needed 200 CDs. This way would take about 4 days to make all of them.
Here's where NAB came in.... We researched most all of the companies out there. We found that in the less than $2000 range that Primera seemed to be the best deal out there. The others featured a gravity loading feature, which to me seemed like it could be trouble. (After talking with a friend who has one, it is a real pain, he says.)
We purchased the BravoII duplicator. AWESOME! It works great. It came with the Kiosk kit that allowed me to duplicate up to 50 discs.
Now, it's two years later and I'm starting to see some issues. I've burned over 1300 discs in this deal. Now, the robotic arm is having some issues running in the Kiosk mode. It seems to work great in standard mode (25 discs at a time). I tried to contact Primera but they will not talk to me UNLESS I purchase an incident ticket for $10. WHAT! That's ridiculous! You've got to be kidding me! If I had purchased a duplicator that was around $3200, tech support would be free. I could have purchased an extended warranty for an additional $250 per year. WHAT! That's ridiculous, too!
Well... The lesson here is.... You get what you pay for. BUT, $2000 for a piece of equipment is a lot of money to me. At least, let me talk to tech support before charging me for support, if I have a valid issue.
Ok.... I'm done with my rant. I hope someone else agrees with me on this.
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robotic duplicators
We have a legacy of dead robotic dupers. The robotic mechanish is mainly controlled by a rubber fanbelt, which I suppose could be replaced. The burners can wear out. The software which controls the loading and unloading of the burners or printer can be flaky, requiring some rebooting or unplugging of the power cord mid dupe run.
I looked at the Primera units at NAB 2007 and they are impressive. Not necessarily any faster when printing full color glossy labels, but they look sweet. But like a performance automobile, which requires loving care, what is the long term effect of running one of these autoloaders?
True....
Your point is very well taken. But one would expect that $2000 would get you a little further than 2 years. I have had printers that lasted 10 years like the original Epson Color Stylus printer that came out in 1995. It still works!
Anyway.... After doing much research, and discussing with my boss, we stayed with Primera mainly for the fact that we have lots of projects that are already created with it and for the fact, that all we have to do is plug in the new one. This time we are going with the Bravo Pro.
Most all of the competition has gravity loaders, of which, I have a colleague that has one of these and he claims it is a "real in the a..". He says that it drops multiple disks by accident all of the time and his unit is less than a year old.
we have one duper which we
we have one duper which we almost never use. It holds 300 discs and dupes 3 at a time. No printing. We took it out of the box, and it failed to work even once. These dupers all seem to have a cheap LCD menu which must be the cheapest LCD menu manufactured at the Acme LCD menu factory in China. I would pay an extra 100 bucks to get a large LCD screen, like what is on a postage meter for example. Anyway, this duper was replaced with a new one, after the company repeatedly claiming they had tested the original unit.
It does not dupe CDs at all, seems ok with the DVDs, but it is just poorly designed. That seems to be an issue with a lot of mechanical devices. It works in the factory, but in the real world that is another story.
WOW! I feel for you.
WOW! I feel for you. Sounds like a brand that shouldn't be on the market. I will admit that I did look at that duplicators, too. But, you still need to print labels. That's why we went with a publisher instead of a duplicator. I've already worn out an Epson printer, and the time it takes to make labels... Whoa! Publishers are cheaper in the long run.