Touted as, "the fastest disc publishers in the world", Primera's line of Bravo 4100 Series disc printers is highly sought after. The Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug) has 2 drives for burning CD-R and DVD-R recordable discs. The 4102 can print 150 discs in as little of 1 hour, significantly more than the competition. In addition, the device also features a Lexmark inkjet printer that creates 4800 dpi graphics for professionally designed discs that look as good as they sound.
The burner features disc picking and transport robotics that are fast and reliable - delivering 300% faster robotics than previous Primera models. The belt drive system provides for smooth, quiet operation. When discs are done burning and printing, they are automatically outputted through the front of printer, making less work for the person doing the burning. Another thoughtful and convenient feature for the operator is the built-in blue LED lighting. Aside from illuminating the inner workings of the burner, this light also pulses when supplies are running low and blinks when an error condition is reported. No matter where the operator is in the room, they'll know of the status of the job being printed.
The Bravo 4100 series printers come with Primera's PTPublisher software - for both Mac and Windows computers. Primera boasts that this software takes "just minutes instead of hours" to learn. You pick the type of job you wish to perform - data, video, audio - and match it with a print file. Then, you hit 'go' and you're burning! The publisher series also features SureThing software for Windows and DiscCover software for Mac. Both are built-in design programs that help you create text, graphics, place photos and backgrounds and more on your discs. This software even allows for printing as far into the middle of the discs as you desire.
In fact, Bravo 4100-Series is up to 20 times faster than competitors for similar print quality, making them the fastest desktop disc printers and publishers in the world.
Disc picking and transport robotics have both been optimized for speed, too. A rock-solid and reliable new belt drive system is utilized to deliver 300% faster robotics than previous models. The belt drive system also gives you smoother and quieter operation
Combine this ultra high resolution printing with Primera's TuffCoat with WaterShield CDs and DVDs and you'll get the most professional looking discs. TuffCoat with WaterShield discs are highly water, scratch, and smudge resistant. They also have a gorgeous, high-gloss finish unlike anything you've probably ever seen before. Virtually all other brands of inkjet-printable optical media are also supported
Simply choose the type of job you want to perform (data, video, audio, etc.), match with a print file, and press "GO." It's that easy!
Built-in disc design software called SureThing Primera Edition (Windows) or DiscCover (Mac) lets you place photos, backgrounds, text and graphics anywhere on the disc, including as far into the middle of the disc as you wish - a major limitation with other brands of disc publishers
| Printing Method | Thermal inkjet; powered by Lexmark |
| Print Resolutions | 4800 dpi |
| Colors | 16.7 million |
| Ink Types | Separate high-capacity ink cartridges for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK) |
| Print Head | Semi-permanent; user replaceable |
| Color Matching | Z-Color color profile included |
| Media Types | CD: CD-R, CD-RW, CD-Audio (CD-DA), Video-CD, MP3 to CD-Audio, most other industry-standard CD formats; DVD: DVD +/- R, DVD +/- RW, DVD +/- DL |
| Media Capacity | 100 discs |
| Number of Drives | 2 |
| Robotics | High-speed belt drive |
| Interface | USB 2.0 for CD/DVD drives; high-speed eSATA for optional BD-R drives |
| Operating System |
Recommended PC system requirements: Intel Celeron Processor or higher,
2GB RAM or higher, 10GB or more free hard
drive space, available USB 2.0 port or
open PCI slot for optional USB 2.0 adapter
card (combo cards not recommended), user
account with Local Administrator rights. For
Blu-ray Disc models, one or two available eSATA ports is required Recommended Mac system requirements: 1 GHz PowerPC or Intel processor or higher, capable of running Mac OS X v10.6 or higher, 1GB RAM, one available USB 2.0 port, 10GB or more free hard drive space. For Blu-ray Disc models, one or two available eSATA ports is required |
| Certifications | UL, UL-C, CE, FCC Class A, RoHS, WEEE |
| Power Requirements | Universal auto-switching 100-240VAC, 50/60 Hz, 5.0A |
| Dimensions (WxHxD) | 17.8 x 11 x 17.5" / 452 x 279 x 445mm |
| Weight | 26 lb / 11.8kg |
| Advanced Features | Indicator lights: External: power, internal: blue LED lighting is on during normal operation; pulses during low-supplies condition; blinks during error condition; Ink level warning: Calculates actual number of prints remaining based upon ink usage of graphics being printed (patent-pending); Options: Blu-ray Disc recordable drives business card adaptor kit; supports: 80mm mini CDs and DVDs, 59 x 85mm rectangular business card CDs, 63 x 80mm rounded "hockey rink" CDs, extended warranty, hot swap program; disc recorders: Latest-generation CD-R/DVD-R recordable drives, optional 12x BD-R drives |
REVIEW SNAPSHOT®
by PowerReviewsPros
Cons
Best Uses
Most Liked Positive Review
Good for short-run dupes, can be quirky
Overall this is a really good product that works as advertised. But it really only makes sense for duplication runs of 1000 or less. Once you get above 1000, your costs vs. return ...Read complete review
Overall this is a really good product that works as advertised. But it really only makes sense for duplication runs of 1000 or less. Once you get above 1000, your costs vs. return (both in terms of supplies and time to operate and administer discs) is higher than if you sent it to a duplication house.
In terms of operation and quality, this thing produces discs that are as reliable and look every bit as good as the big duplication houses. However, you CANNOT use the highest quality print settings and expect to actually make money with this unit. The highest settings look gorgeous but use a TON of ink. We can barely get 100 discs (at roughly 50% coverage per disc) printed using the high setting. We typically use the middle of the 5 quality settings and it looks comparable to professionally printed discs, although you can get some banding in solid color, heavily saturated areas. In those cases, we up it to the 2nd to highest setting, which also uses a LOT of ink, but it's acceptable in terms of the number of discs you get.
Overall, we typically get about 250-300 discs printed at the mid-setting before having to replace ink, and about 150-200 at the 2nd to highest setting. It's 100 and under at the highest setting and possibly far fewer depending on the ink coverage of your label.
In terms of speed, for a 15-25 minute video, we can typically burn & print anywhere from 40-60 DVDs per hour (we have the 2 burner unit). Obviously the longer the video the less you get burned and the shorter it is the more you get.
In terms of operational use, setup was not difficult but is far from intuitive. The instructions that come with the unit are odd in that they don't show you how to install or replace the ink cartridges. A fairly important and repetitive task considering how much ink it uses. We had to look at some photos and drawings to figure it out, but even then I still put my fingers on the ink heads inadvertently, getting both my fingers and the heads dirty in the process. So they could really improve the setup instructions.
Software installed fine on a Windows XP computer and we have it connected via USB 2 to the unit. That seems to work fine for moving data for burning. The software on the Windows side of things is pretty good. Fairly intuitive and pretty easy to operate. One odd quirk is you cannot save a job if you're making your discs from a DVD master...only if you're burning from files on disc or a disc image. Sort of dumb in my opinion and also not explained at all in the literature.
In terms of reliability, the robotic arms are neat and work well about 98% of the time. Occasionally the unit gets confused in the middle of a job (sometimes after burning hundreds of discs) and it will try to load a disc into the printer that isn't in the burning tray. It's as if it forgets the sequence of what's been burned and what hasn't from the blank tray. The unit usually tells you what to do to fix it with a dialog popup and that works about 50% of the time. Sometimes you just have to abort the job and then start a new one for it to reset things. This has happened 4 or 5 times across scores of burn jobs, so not like it's a constant problem, but happens often enough to be annoying.
Another goofy thing is that to burn 100 at a time you have to attach an additional tray and put the unit in what they call "kiosk mode." You load up both bins with blanks and it spits the burned/printed discs out into the middle kiosk bin. Two problems with this method. If you get a bad disc (which the unit can detect), it usually spits THAT out the middle. So in this "kiosk mode" a bad disc gets ejected into the middle bin and gets mixed in with your good discs. So you have no way of knowing if the unit spit out a bad burn.
Now we've only had it reject discs (as bad) twice after burning literally several thousand discs, so not a huge deal..but still a dopey method. The other problem with kiosk mode is the eject bin is really tall and deep...so if your label has a lot of ink coverage...the first 15-20 drop a LONG way down into the bin. What happens is that as they land on top of each other, the force of the disc can scuff and scratch the surface of the one below. So the kiosk mode is mostly useless and we just stick to doing 50 at a time. Now if the disc doesn't have heavy ink, the kiosk modes works fine...but you don't know until you burn and try it.
In terms of cost, we get discs from B&H for about $28 per 100, ink is roughly $64 for color (the black cartridge lasts forever) and $21 for black. So for doing 1000 discs, it usually costs us $280 for discs and about $200 for ink. Add in plastic clamshell cases at about $.17 a piece ($170 per 1000) and you're up to $650 in hard costs. We typically try to get $2 per disc so we make about $1,350 duping 1000. BUT...doing that many requires several hours of someone's time loading the unit, setting up the label, unloading, stuffing discs into cases etc. When it's all said and done, you could send them out to a place like Discmakers and they'll charge you $1,150 including shipping to your customer. So you could mark that up 50% and make $575 without having to do much of anything.
The only advantage of this unit at 1000 or higher is turnaround time. You can easily dupe 1000 DVDs that are 20 minutes long or less in 2 days. So while that price from Discmakers.com would take about 7-10 business days in turnaround time...you could do it 2 or 3. That's the ONLY advantage of this unit when you get to 1000.
Now for runs of 500 and under, this unit is GREAT. Especially for clients that want 100 or under. It's a HUGE timesaver and is cost-effective because you can get away with charging $3 and $4 per disc when you do under 100...and charge $2 to $2.50 at 250 to 500.
We're glad we bought it but it's NOT a big money saver or money-maker unless you do a ton of short-run jobs of 250 or less. Then it makes a TON of sense to get this unit.
If you're doing 500 and up time and again. It makes zero sense to buy this unit, regardless of how good, reliable or fast it might be.
VS
Most Liked Negative Review
If it works immediately, you're lucky!
We use the former publisher, the disk publisher pro and the problems began when the drives haven't been recognized by PTPublisher. There are confusing directives on primera's drivers site and you're lucky, if you...Read complete review
We use the former publisher, the disk publisher pro and the problems began when the drives haven't been recognized by PTPublisher. There are confusing directives on primera's drivers site and you're lucky, if you - in contrary of answers by the support - find the right driver. The main problem is, that actual versions, which are for months obviously in BETA phases and don't fit to operation systems just one OS generation older, have bugs like "can't print on the area closer than 1,4 inches in the center" or don't recognize the printer and/or drives at all. Certainly, nobody of the marketing department of primera tell's you about these facts, unless you experience this problems on your own.
So I can say: We never ever would buy a new, expensive system from primera as long as the running systems don't work properly and these information gaps between public relation (read the testimonial statements) and reality exist! I'm not familiar with the 4102 series, but why should a company care about these kind of singular seeming problems with any new (old) system? The software problems aren't yet solved at all and the technical management of the 4102 is the same as for the disk publisher pro.
So be aware: if you need help from the primera support or database because the time goes by, be patient and don't expect too much. At least you have to think about changing the systems at time and buy a duplicator, which simply runs.
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Reviewed by 14 customers
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
Overall this is a really good product that works as advertised. But it really only makes sense for duplication runs of 1000 or less. Once you get above 1000, your costs vs. return (both in terms of supplies and time to operate and administer discs) is higher than if you sent it to a duplication house.
In terms of operation and quality, this thing produces discs that are as reliable and look every bit as good as the big duplication houses. However, you CANNOT use the highest quality print settings and expect to actually make money with this unit. The highest settings look gorgeous but use a TON of ink. We can barely get 100 discs (at roughly 50% coverage per disc) printed using the high setting. We typically use the middle of the 5 quality settings and it looks comparable to professionally printed discs, although you can get some banding in solid color, heavily saturated areas. In those cases, we up it to the 2nd to highest setting, which also uses a LOT of ink, but it's acceptable in terms of the number of discs you get.
Overall, we typically get about 250-300 discs printed at the mid-setting before having to replace ink, and about 150-200 at the 2nd to highest setting. It's 100 and under at the highest setting and possibly far fewer depending on the ink coverage of your label.
In terms of speed, for a 15-25 minute video, we can typically burn & print anywhere from 40-60 DVDs per hour (we have the 2 burner unit). Obviously the longer the video the less you get burned and the shorter it is the more you get.
In terms of operational use, setup was not difficult but is far from intuitive. The instructions that come with the unit are odd in that they don't show you how to install or replace the ink cartridges. A fairly important and repetitive task considering how much ink it uses. We had to look at some photos and drawings to figure it out, but even then I still put my fingers on the ink heads inadvertently, getting both my fingers and the heads dirty in the process. So they could really improve the setup instructions.
Software installed fine on a Windows XP computer and we have it connected via USB 2 to the unit. That seems to work fine for moving data for burning. The software on the Windows side of things is pretty good. Fairly intuitive and pretty easy to operate. One odd quirk is you cannot save a job if you're making your discs from a DVD master...only if you're burning from files on disc or a disc image. Sort of dumb in my opinion and also not explained at all in the literature.
In terms of reliability, the robotic arms are neat and work well about 98% of the time. Occasionally the unit gets confused in the middle of a job (sometimes after burning hundreds of discs) and it will try to load a disc into the printer that isn't in the burning tray. It's as if it forgets the sequence of what's been burned and what hasn't from the blank tray. The unit usually tells you what to do to fix it with a dialog popup and that works about 50% of the time. Sometimes you just have to abort the job and then start a new one for it to reset things. This has happened 4 or 5 times across scores of burn jobs, so not like it's a constant problem, but happens often enough to be annoying.
Another goofy thing is that to burn 100 at a time you have to attach an additional tray and put the unit in what they call "kiosk mode." You load up both bins with blanks and it spits the burned/printed discs out into the middle kiosk bin. Two problems with this method. If you get a bad disc (which the unit can detect), it usually spits THAT out the middle. So in this "kiosk mode" a bad disc gets ejected into the middle bin and gets mixed in with your good discs. So you have no way of knowing if the unit spit out a bad burn.
Now we've only had it reject discs (as bad) twice after burning literally several thousand discs, so not a huge deal..but still a dopey method. The other problem with kiosk mode is the eject bin is really tall and deep...so if your label has a lot of ink coverage...the first 15-20 drop a LONG way down into the bin. What happens is that as they land on top of each other, the force of the disc can scuff and scratch the surface of the one below. So the kiosk mode is mostly useless and we just stick to doing 50 at a time. Now if the disc doesn't have heavy ink, the kiosk modes works fine...but you don't know until you burn and try it.
In terms of cost, we get discs from B&H for about $28 per 100, ink is roughly $64 for color (the black cartridge lasts forever) and $21 for black. So for doing 1000 discs, it usually costs us $280 for discs and about $200 for ink. Add in plastic clamshell cases at about $.17 a piece ($170 per 1000) and you're up to $650 in hard costs. We typically try to get $2 per disc so we make about $1,350 duping 1000. BUT...doing that many requires several hours of someone's time loading the unit, setting up the label, unloading, stuffing discs into cases etc. When it's all said and done, you could send them out to a place like Discmakers and they'll charge you $1,150 including shipping to your customer. So you could mark that up 50% and make $575 without having to do much of anything.
The only advantage of this unit at 1000 or higher is turnaround time. You can easily dupe 1000 DVDs that are 20 minutes long or less in 2 days. So while that price from Discmakers.com would take about 7-10 business days in turnaround time...you could do it 2 or 3. That's the ONLY advantage of this unit when you get to 1000.
Now for runs of 500 and under, this unit is GREAT. Especially for clients that want 100 or under. It's a HUGE timesaver and is cost-effective because you can get away with charging $3 and $4 per disc when you do under 100...and charge $2 to $2.50 at 250 to 500.
We're glad we bought it but it's NOT a big money saver or money-maker unless you do a ton of short-run jobs of 250 or less. Then it makes a TON of sense to get this unit.
If you're doing 500 and up time and again. It makes zero sense to buy this unit, regardless of how good, reliable or fast it might be.
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
Easy to set-up. Delivery was excellent from B&H, took about 4 business days from New York to Kuwait. Everything I ordered was packed well and it was all there undamaged. Excellent work B&H.
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
Ok I opened the box and took out my Bravo 4102 and thought I would call support just to ask a question and wow the lady on the other end remote into my computer and set everything up for me in a matter of minutes. I do about 200 disks a month and does it fly and the software is so easy to use. Support is big with me and was I impressed with my support person.
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
Bought this to replace my old Bravo Pro. Never had a problem with the Pro unit over all the years I've used it. This is faster in transporting discs and WAYYY faster printing (4 seconds!). You get a nice software pack including the CD ripper that will take a stack of CDs and make them iTunes compatible MP3 with album info and art. Love the blue lighting. Really love that the ink is now 3 separate cartidges. This is going to rock for the next 5 years or more. Way to go Primera!
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
I have been using Primera Pro 6200 with the Signiture Printer for years. It was time to upgrade to the Bravo 4102. I have only had it for a few months and love it. The software is diffrent than the original but I'm learning to like it. The Printer is clean and works great. Very good product!
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
This system is easy to set-up out of the box. Made my first disc in under 20 minutes including art! Delivery was excellent from B&H, took about 8 business days from east coast to the west coast. Everything I ordered was packed well and it was all there undamaged. Great work B&H!!
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
Bought this for my new dance videography business. So far it has worked great. Need to wait until the season is over to be sure of reliability, but I am encouraged by initial results.
Pros
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
We use the former publisher, the disk publisher pro and the problems began when the drives haven't been recognized by PTPublisher. There are confusing directives on primera's drivers site and you're lucky, if you - in contrary of answers by the support - find the right driver. The main problem is, that actual versions, which are for months obviously in BETA phases and don't fit to operation systems just one OS generation older, have bugs like "can't print on the area closer than 1,4 inches in the center" or don't recognize the printer and/or drives at all. Certainly, nobody of the marketing department of primera tell's you about these facts, unless you experience this problems on your own.
So I can say: We never ever would buy a new, expensive system from primera as long as the running systems don't work properly and these information gaps between public relation (read the testimonial statements) and reality exist! I'm not familiar with the 4102 series, but why should a company care about these kind of singular seeming problems with any new (old) system? The software problems aren't yet solved at all and the technical management of the 4102 is the same as for the disk publisher pro.
So be aware: if you need help from the primera support or database because the time goes by, be patient and don't expect too much. At least you have to think about changing the systems at time and buy a duplicator, which simply runs.
Pros
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
Professional look and sound quality for Indie DVD's and CD's. Best in-house publishing on the market.
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
This machine makes top-quality short-runs for indie CD's and DVD's. Easy to operate. Best price available.
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
FAST AND BRILLIANT PRINT
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
We are excited that our faculty and staff can create their own designs for their DVDs since the Bravo 4102 is MacBook compatible!
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
I use the print only feature to prelabel discs that I will burn on my computer that isn't attached to the 4102. I also use the 4102 to create and label CD/DVD projects. I had a problem getting it to print, I contacted Primera and it turned out to be the longer USB cable I used instead of the one included. I replaced the cable and the 4102 works great, I have printed on a variety of inkjet printable media and they all look beautiful. Would recommend to anyone looking for a professional disc publisher.
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Comments about Primera Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher W/ 2 Drives (US Plug):
I'm so excited about our new Bravo 4102 Disc Publisher. We place this unit in our work flow and it performed with excellent speed. The quality of each printed cd and dvd was flawless.
Displaying reviews 1-14