NEC officially announces the first DVD burners with Labelflash technology. The PC drives will be available from December onwards. Labelflash burns custom motifs, lettering or images onto the top side of DVD blanks.

The drives will not only support DVD +R(W) and DVD-R(W) but also DVD-RAM.

Labelflash delivers high image quality because it enables 256 brightness shades. The labelling process takes only around seven minutes. One special feature is that both the top side and the data side of the blank can be labelled ? provided that there is enough available memory. Labelflash can be used for blanks with a writable Labelflash top surface. On these media, the labelled top surface is covered by 0.6 millimetre-thick, protect layer which ensures that even labels that are exposed to light are extremely durable.



The new NEC's ND-4551A has been already reviewed by CDRInfo.com. The burner supports DVD minus and DVD plus media recording at up to 16x DVD speed, while rewritable (DVD +RW) and double-layer DVDs (DVD +R9) are written at up to 8x DVD speed. DVD-RW and DVD-R DL are processed at 6x speed. 5x speed applies for DVD-RAMs. As a read drive, the burner delivers 16x DVD, 5x DVD RAM and 48x CD speed. NEC will also be marketing a lower cost model without Labelflash, the ND-4550A, which has the same write and read speeds as the ND-4551A.

The two new DVD burners ND-3551A (with Labelflash) and ND-3550A (without Labelflash) are also available in two further versions which do not support DVDRAM.