I've been checking out taiyo yuden CD-Rs and see that they come with several different surfaces. I don't use a printer to print on mine -- just a soft marking pen.
What are these various surfaces for?
Silver Thermal Lacquer
Silver Thermal Hub Printable
White Thermal Hub Printable
Silver Inkjet Printable
White Inkjet Printable
White Inkjet Hub Printable
What's Hub Printable?
Which ones allow writing on the label with a soft marker?
Thermal printables require a thermal printer, or more accurately, labeler (CW-50 and CW-75 for text, basically) such as the Casio consumer model. Unless you have thousands of dollars to buy a REAL thermal printer.
Inkjet printables can be printed on with affordable (sometimes lower than $100) consumer model inkjet printers by Casio (Pixma 3000 and 4000 series in the UK) and Epson (R200 and R300 series in US). The finished product looks very close to commercial quality if you use hi res images.
Hub printables allow you to print within 21mm of the center (very close to covering entire disc). Non-hub printables restrict you to within 45mm or so of center (a huge hole in my opinion). To date, I have only seen hub printables in the white inkjet printable variety and non-hub in the silver inkjet variety.
I like the white Ritek CD/DVD surface for printing and as a side note, the Canon printers in North America (IP3000, 4000, 4200 et al) can be easily modified to accept a home made tray for printing your CD/DVD's.
I modified an ip3000 and ip5000 to do so.
