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Pioneer DVR-A05 Review
kila_m writes "
Over at DVD Writers
we have the world's first review of the
recently announced Pioneer DVR-A05 DVD writer. It supports
4 speed DVD-R writing, 2 speed DVD-RW, 16 speed CD-R and is
able to write to CD-RW disks at 8 speed. The review is based on a
pre-release unit and is fairly comprehensive.
" The review itself is one level deeper.
We are using the DVR A03 here for backup purposes and hacking together Linux DVDs. I must say that this device really is great. Pioneer support is also quite good. The writer died a couple of weeks ago, but an exchange device came only a few days later.
And with DVD-R media at about 3,- EUR and DVD-RW at 6,- it also becomes a feasible alternative to CD-R/RW. The old DVR A03 also costs "only" 300,- EUR now. That's a price many people might be willing to pay, and when the DVR A05 hits the stores, I think prices will fall even more.
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Maybe because you can't write on a small CD with slot loading writers... But again, you can't read them using the Pioneer DVD's... Strange.
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-Kevin
CD[-R[W]] speeds are relative to the standard speed of an audio CD (153.6 kbps).
DVD speeds are relative to the standard speed of a movie DVD (1,108 kbps).
For one thing, the complexity of the electronics they've got to jam in the drive goes up because they need hardware to interpret CD and DVD. Also, there are something like three different wavelengths to support with the laser (CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD) IIRC.
Technically, the drive will be capable of spinning both at the same speed, but it's the interpretation of the data that comes in that is the limiting factor in this case.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Heck, I've got audio cd-rs that I burned a few years back that are still fine, even though they've spent quite a bit of time in the car.
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Because more and more companies are realizing that SCSI does not provide us with substantial performance advantage.. and only few high-end motherboards have scsi controllers on-board, but they all have ATA/IDE controllers.
...
SCSI burners work better and tend to last longer, although the only metric I have are my Plextors who have lasted a few years now. This is versus HP IDE burners which have both failed.
That has nothing to do with scsi/ide... my IDE Plextor did not fail in 2 years too. But friends HP did.
Anyway.. we're all waiting for SATA. serial, cheap, faster, thinner cables,
I used to feel the same way as you with regards to IDE burners. I had a Hi-Val 4x IDE CDR and it was the biggest steaming pile of crap I ever had the misfortune of using. I got sick of it and bought a new (at the time) Sony 8x SCSI burner, and an old Adaptec 2940 card a friend had. It provided me very good service over the last couple years.
:)
Then, recently my CDROM decided to flake out on me. This was my 4rd CDROM (not burner) to die on me in the last 5 years. I will never ever buy one of those cheap crap (HiVal, Asus, Mitsumi etc etc) CDROMs or burners again. I decided enough was enough, so I replaced my dead cdrom with a 40/12/48 burner from Sony (IDE) for like $90 at compusa (I know i could get it cheaper but i wanted it NOW) and its been flawless for me under Linux and Windows.
So I took out my 8x burner and I use the newer Sony for my CD reading and writing instead of having seperate readers and burners. I'll probably sell the scsi 8x and scsi card on ebay, they've been good to me.
siri
I agree with you. I have had a SCSI Plextor 8x4x20 that has lasted for almost 4 years. Never burnt a coaster to my knowledge. I too would like to see this in SCSI.
For one reason, companies are the primary users of SCSI and thier expensive counter-parts. They can afford it! This drive in SCSI would definately have a use here for my backing up servers. (And I could listen to CD's with the 1/8" Jack and Volume control when I am not using it for backups!(See previous post))
The "performance" that most people generally think of is maximum transfer speed. However, as IDE doesn't allow nice bus sharing or commands to be processed by different drives, SCSI basically allows you to do more things at a time. Also, the very low CPU usage helps out too. I used to have a Yamaha SCSI drive, and I would expect the IDE drive to be nearly identical in "performance" and reliability. However, I also used to burn CDs, surf the Web, copy large files, etc., at the same time. Never burnt a coaster. This was on a P2-300 BTW.
Thus, there is no real standard for "generic" 2x discs; those that claim to be are either re-labeled (and expensive) or (speculation) have "fake" identifiers -- the quality and compatability varies greatly, but suffice to say, most are quite poor.
Though, I did say that consumer DVD-R is here: Princo ($0.66) and Ritek ($1.00) both make fine (and cheap) 1x discs which can be burned at 2x using a "hacked" firmware. My experience suggests that Princo 1x media are good for 2x, although set-top compatability seems to suffer. Many have reported good luck with Riteks, although I've had poor luck with discs over 4.00 GB (full capacity is 4.38 GB).
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Does it support both +R and -R discs?
I'm waiting for one of the standards to go away or both to merge in all drives (betamax-fobia).
Sony has a DVD-RW/+RW unit coming out next month. The positive reviews, speedy 4x DVD+RW write speed, and a pretty good pricepoint ($350) might make this a popular unit VERY quickly.
The neutrality of this sig is disputed.
is only to serve as a warning to others.
Don't get sucked in by a low priced HP DVD i100 burner. I picked one up to create ghost images for our SE's demo laptops. With the latest bios, drivers, etc - I've found two DVD-ROM's that will actually read a burned CD. Unfortunately, that does not include any of the IBM think pads, Dell latitudes, or any other Dell workstation in our shop.
For $99, HP will 'update' the drive to make it work with DVD-R's. That is another stinky issue since they advertised it worked with the -R media, but I'm OK with DVD-RW media if it actually was readable by anything I picked it up for. The box said it ran under Win2K server - it does, but only as a DVD-ROM. The burning software only 'works' with Win2K workstation and below. Customer Service was less than helpful.
Rather than spend the $99 and hope - We picked up a Pioneer unit (not the one in this review, but don't remember the number) and have had no problems. Fool me once...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
No, you're not magically going to burn a sincle CD faster with a SCSI drive. But using speed as the only rationale is not looking at the whole picture. It's sort of like saying that the dual 600MHz Origin server is less worthwhile than my PC, because my PC crunches numbers faster and is cheaper.
If the extra $100 I pay for a SCSI drive means that I will enjoy never having to replace the drive; never having to deal with a software compatibility hassle; never having to deal with an interoperability hassle with another device in my loaded system; and never having less than the best performance that I expect from the equipment, then that's an extra fee that I will be happy to pay and not look back.
The choice is up to the individual, but all these people bemoaning those who have preferred, and still prefer, SCSI drives is sort of ridiculous. Isn't a diverse marketplace supposed to be a good thing?
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TDK 2x DVD-R spindle of 50, $125. So $2.50 per disc for name-brand blanks. I've been using the generic 2x DVD-R's on the same page without trouble (spindle of 25 for $45) on my DVR-A04 with dvdrecord under Red Hat 8. Non-2x-certified blanks are of course cheaper, but I don't burn enough discs to worry about that. I haven't tried burning DVD videos yet, I suspect my old Sony 530D deck won't like them, but new decks are cheap. Pinnacle's StudioDV 8 (Windoze) ought to be simple enough to use once I get time to play with it, I used v7 to burn VCDs.
My Plextor IDE's been working fine for 18 months. Don't see any reason why I should spend the extra cash on SCSI - cpu load is negligable, I have no problems with multitasking & burning.
Personally, I can think of very few situations where it's worth shelling out the extra cash for SCSI these days.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
how foobar speed DVD relates to foobar speed CD?
...but i'm still waiting for the DVR media standard to match the DVD media standard regarding disk size;
rtfa
it explains right there:
DVD-R @ 4x, 5.54MB/s
CD-R @ 16x, 2.46MB/s
(40/16)*2.46=6.15, so CD-R @ 40x is 6.15MB/s
and (5.54/4)/(2.46/16)=9.00813 (so khuber's above statement is right)
#1 reason you can't copy a commercial DVD is that it's twice as big.
and I would LOVE 9GB disks...
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I just got the Sony DRU500A yesterday. For those looking for one CompUSA actually had them in stock when NO ONE else did. Dell screwed me on my order for one pushing it back until Nov. 29th...so I gave in and went to Comp and got it for $349.
It's a great drive. Does DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, and CD-R/RW. No more worrying about DVD standards. So far I've only got to test it at 1x since that's the media I have, but it worked just fine.
My only complaint is the the front of the tray is Sony silver, while the rest of the drive is white. Might look OK in an aluminum case, though.
CONCLUSION
Pros
Supports writing 99min CDs
4 Speed DVD-R Support
2 Speed DVD-RW Support
Supports DAO-RAW mode
Higher DVD read speeds for DVD-ROM & HS media
Lower access times
Can read and write 96 bytes sub-channels
Fast & perfect audio ripping
Can produce X-Box & Playstation compatible disks
Can read & write CD-Text
DVD "-" offers better compatibility with older players
Low cost of ownership
Cons
Has problems reading 99min CDRs (can write them OK)
CD-RW write support is only 8x speed
Slow x2 speed CSS ripping (1.8x)
Still No C2 error read mode
Can not write Safedisk 2.51+ (incorrect EFM encoder)
Slow reading Safedisk CDs
Very poor CD-R read performance
Poor quality media
No defect management for DVD-RWs
Pioneer has finally delivered on what we and most others wanted most in a DVD writer and that was an increase in DVD recording speeds. There is no disputing that the speed at which new DVD writers record to DVD-Rs at is light years ahead of the 1st generation drives - the A05 only needs 15mins to writes a whole 4.7GB of data.
We were slightly disappointed with the A05's CD writing ability, mainly its CD-R maximum writing speed of 16 X and its relatively slow re-write speed. It's interesting to note that the preliminary product specifications show that Pioneer had faster CD recordable features and higher DVD-ROM read speeds in mind but decided against implementing them.
We were pleased that Pioneer added support for writing in DAO-RAW mode - a useful feature used by Clone-CD for backing up games (in countries that permit it). This addition isn't all that it appears to be as its performance was so bad that it's pretty ineffective - it failed to backup any of our games and took long time to read them!
The A04 was particularly good at reading and writing 99min CD-Rs and was one of the best performers for that specific test - the DVR A05 does not follow its lead unfortunately. It can write to 99mins fine but when it came to reading what it had written it had severe problems (this was verified with disks that the A04 had produced).
One of the major improvements that we noticed with this drive was its random access times for DVDs - they are so much faster than the A04 and you wont be disappointed if you'r used to handling many small files.
The 4X DVD recording is an incredibly nice feature to have but unfortunately we didn't get to test it as 4 speed DVD-R and 2 speed DVD-RW disks are not out here in the UK and this is a PRE-RELEASE unit we have reviewed, but we hope to re-test the DVR-A05 with a full retail version if/when the opportunity arises.
The drive had major problems when reading CDs, whether it was a CD-ROM or CD-R it was incredibly fussy and slow. The access times for CDs was good but the transfer rate was slow for everyday use. This is an area where even the older A04 is better at.
With a price tag of £249.00 we feel that Pioneer may have been beaten at its own game by the likes of Sony, Philips, Panasonic and Sanyo who are all due to release 4 speed DVD writers (Sony have already released the DRU-500A in America) with faster recording speeds and more features. The A05 has its work cut out and our advice is wait and see what the competition offers.
I would LOVE 9GB disks
DVDs that are not writable, like those they put movies on, are 9.4 GB in size, because they contain two 4.7 GB layers per disc. As yet, no one has had much luck creating a writer that can burn on two different layers, so we're limited to single layer discs for writing DVDs at home.
Double sided DVD-R media are available, so it's still possible to fit an entire move onto one disc, as long as you don't mind flipping it half-way through.
Out of all the movies on DVD I've purchased, Stargate for some reason is formatted on a 4.7 GB per side disc and requires that it be flipped half-way through the movie... weird...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
I have 2 year old CD-Rs burned as audio CDs that are just fine, in spite of being stored and handled in the worst possible manner: in my car.
I live in Minnesota, so we get 100 deg F heat in the summer, -30 F in the winter. I shove CDs 2-3 at a time into a single pocket in the visor holder, leave them on the seat, I park in the sun at home and at work and I have yet to have one quit on me.
I also buy the cheapest brand X generics I can find, so its not like I'm buying expensive archival quality media.
The only thing I do is burn them at 4x instead of 8x because they tend to skip more at 8x, but that's probably just a car/media/burner interaction problem.
Because it's a composition of several factors. First off 1x is about 3 times faster than 1x CD. (Ie the disc spins 3 times faster.)
Second the data is more densely packed on the disc, this contributes another factor of 3.
Total ~ 9 times faster.
The math on the previous post was a little off.
The original CDR drives were 1x. That meant that you could burn a 700 MB (this was before 750) CDR in 1 unit of time. So the 2xCDRs could burn the same amount in half the time.
DVDRs conform to the same formula - they are able to burn 4.7GB in 1 unit of time.
Assume that the unit of time is the same for both CDRs and DVDRs. It follows that:
4.7GB * 1024B = 4812.8 MB capacity of a DVDR
4812.8MB / 700MB = One DVDR is 6.875 times the size of a CDR
Therefore, a 1x DVDR is equivalent to about a 7x CDR