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Duplicator Review: Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher
"New unit publishes incredible looking discs using solid robotics and a new print cartridge configuration."
Primera is well known for its line of disc publishers— robotic devices that will burn CDs, DVDs and, if properly equipped, Blu-Ray discs. Its integrated inkjet printing technologies are used to print beautiful artwork onto the disc surface. Recently Primera introduced the Bravo 4100 line of publishers, and I had the opportunity to try out the 4102 publisher, equipped with two DVD burners. The publisher can operate in two modes. In its normal mode, the right disc bin holds blank media (a 50-disc capacity), and the left disc bin receives the completed discs. Any failed discs get ejected from the slot directly in front of the DVD burners.
The second mode of operation is called “Kiosk” mode. You add the provided 100-disccapacity tray to the front of the publisher where the rejected discs would normally get discarded in standard mode, and the two internal bins are both used for blank media. In this mode of operation, the publisher can duplicate up to 100 discs in one session.
For software, it comes with Primera’s PTPublisher system that actually runs the robotics and controls the project queue. For creating disc labels, SureThing disc label software is included. For quick label creation, the SureThing program is fine to use. If you want a really snazzy label, you’re going to want to use your graphic design program of choice, like Photoshop or Illustrator. I did all of my labels in Illustrator, and exported a JPEG image for use with the publisher.
To run a project, you fire up the PTPublisher program, load up the blank media, and step through a few windows providing the files to be burned and the label to be used. There are several types of jobs you can choose, from copying an existing disc, to making audio and video discs, to burning data discs. You can also duplicate an ISO image of a disc.
In Action
On the printing side of things, Primera has moved the Bravo line to separate cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges instead of one tri-color cartridge. I love this change—now if you have a project that’s heavy on one color ink, you aren’t wasting ink by having to change all three colors at once. Love that.
I used the publisher with my two-year-old Sony Vaio laptop. Unpacking and installation went fine—you just insert the installation CD and it walks you through the steps to unpack, connect and setup the publisher hardware and software. In order for my computer to see the drives after installation, I needed to reboot. Once rebooted, everything was up and running. It’s not uncommon for software installations to need a reboot afterwards, so this was easy to figure out. Primera reports that if you cancel the installation early, you won’t get a message to reboot your computer.
My first run of discs was a three-song audio demo CD project I did for a friend. It has a full-color label, heavy on greens and blues. I loaded up 50 discs and let it rip. It tore through 50 discs in very short order—printing is incredibly fast, and the robotics do not waste much time either. During the process, I did get an error from Windows 7 stating that “PTPublisher has stopped working,” but the job continued until it was completed. The software failure left one CD-R in one of the two drives in an incompletely burned state, and the job could only use the other drive for burning at that point-but the job did complete, and that's the only time I saw that error occur. The discs looked excellent.
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Jim Kumorek is the owner of Spreading Flames Media, providing video/media production and writing services to the A/V/L, technology, architectural and hospitality industries. He has led audio, video and lighting teams in churches as both staff and a volunteer for over 10 years. He can be contacted at james@spreadingflamesmedia.com.
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