Pioneer will eventually offer Yamaha's LabalFlash disc labeling technology through its OEM DVR-111 series of DVD burners.

The Labelflash technology was recently introduced by Yamaha Corporation and Fuji Photo Film Co. This technology promotes the ability to burn images directly onto a specialized dye layer on the disc label side, with the same laser used for data recording.

Pioneer has plans to release a LabelFlash-capable drive in March. However, at this time Pioneer is in the middle of finalising its Labelflash contract with Yamaha. As soon as our contract is finalised, the Japanese company is expected to start to introduce its Labelflash-capable drives, which will be based on the DVR-111L series. The Labelflash drives will only be sold to OEMs and will not be sold as bare drives to the general aftermarket.

Japanese Buffallo announced today the DVSM-XL516 LabelFlash series, based on the Pioneer DVR-111L. The drive writes DVD±R at 16X, DVD±R DL at 8X, DVD+RW at 8X , DVD-RW at 6X and DVD-RAM at 5X. For more information visit http://buffalo.melcoinc.co.jp (Japanese).