Hewlett Packard now sells Colour LightScribe within the United Kingdom

Hewlett Packard main distributors received their first batch of Coloured LightScribe blank disc media this week. The new laser etched technology has evolved from the original gold to five primary individual colours.

Online retailer Bigpockets.co.uk caught the competition napping and managed to buy all the first stocks. Simon Parkinson, the Managing Director of Bigpockets the online media store was reported to have said “I am sure it will not take our competitors long to catch up once they realise we have temporarily cornered the marketplace”.

The LightScribe technology was conceived by a Hewlett Packard engineer in Corvallis, Oregon and brought to market through the joint design efforts of Hewlett Packard's imaging and optical storage division.

LightScribe allows users to create direct-to-disc labels (as opposed to stick-on labels), using their optical disc writer. Special discs and a compatible disc writer are required. After burning data to the read-side of the disc, the user simply turns the media over and inserts it with the label side down. The drive's laser then etches into the label side in such a way that an image is produced.

The new colours are Red, blue, green, yellow and Orange, but the burn layer is still the original monochromatic grey, still only available in the CD-R format but rumour has it Hewlett Packard will be releasing DVD media with the same colour range.

Currently it's not possible to rewrite a LightScribe label but it's possible to add more content to a label that is already burned.