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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.

9 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Why don't they ever clarify by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    how foobar speed DVD relates to foobar speed CD?

    Who will be the first to announce a DVD recorder that is 56x *

    * Oh, by the way, that's equivillant to 56x CD, added by our marketing department :-)

    Also, as DVDs are thinner than CDs, can they spin faster without breaking???

  2. All I want for Christmas is my DVD writer... by Torqued · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It looks like this Christmas could be a good one for DVD writer sales. The price-point is now pretty reasonable for Joe Consumer. What's the state of the DVD editing/authoring software? I wonder if a highly rated bundle of a DVD writer and well reviewed software for Christmas could move enough units to begin to influence the war over recordable DVD formats...

    1. Re:All I want for Christmas is my DVD writer... by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes and no...

      Joe Schmoe doesnt want a DVD writer except for one reason only... to write DVD's that have the home movies on them. currently the incompatability between burned DVD's and stand alone DVD players is so bad that even the seasoned DVD creators are standing back and waiting.. (No i do not have a DVD burner at home, only at work.. and on linux :-)

      Until they can make it as fool-proof as SVCD or VCD's on your dvd player... (my first firewire card came with videowaveIII that allowed me to capture/edit/burn to SVCD without even thinking... which is good for the average windows user.)

      DVD VIDEO creation is still difficult and iffy. and at $5.00 a pop for the cheapest DVD blank... Joe doesnt want to risk it not being playable in aunt nellies dvd player.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. Does look good. by QuiK_ChaoS · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am just wondering how many more Atapi drives have to come out before they phase of that stupid 1/8" Jack nad Volume control that no-one uses. Would make them easier to paint and mod.

    Of course everyone reading this probably uses them. I personaly never ever have.

  4. Not interested by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    DVDs are too little too late. They've been "on hold" for too long to be the next-gen data-storage solution. If DVDs are supposed to stay around for a few years, how are 4.7 GB supposed to be enough? Harddisks are already too big to be backupped to DVD and it's only getting worse. Compare the 1000-fold increase in storage capacity of harddisks over the last decade with the meager 7-fold increase from CD to DVD. I think that DVD is a very short-lived phenomenon.

  5. Re:SCSI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just like you said SCSI/IDE are just interfaces. I think your point of failure is the HP drives, Hoss. Stop buying them.

    Benefits to IDE: Cheaper to buy, doesn't take up a spot on my SCSI chain (I've got devices that actually need U160 on there.)

    My recommendation: buy a cheap IDE controller (last time I checked Promise made one for $30) and a nice IDE burner. You'll see it utilize .3% more CPU, not worth spending $100+ more for a slower speed SCSI drive just to save that CPU.

  6. Mount Rainer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Not cool. The drive doesn't support Mt. Rainer. It may cost a lot of usuable space on the disk, but the Mt. Rainer extensions have been quite convenient for me on cd drives. Hopefully I'll be able to get a DVD writer which implements them soon...

  7. Re:SCSI is dying... by alsta · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "I even see SATA proclaimed to be to the harddisks what the switch is over the hub."

    I would say that the analogy is more likely (Switch == SCSI) && (ATA == Hub).

    And why are you surprised that there are no 10k+ RPM disks for ATA? Because of two things;

    1) With IDE, rotational latency isn't really that big of a deal because the congestion is at the bus level. IDE disks don't have any intelligence built in to speak of, which is why they're cheaper than SCSI. So all the rotational speed in the world won't do any difference.

    2) Why spend money developing faster IDE disks when it's far too difficult to retain compatibility and keeping production costs low..? Because it isn't worth it. It's money in the wishing well.

    " Yeah, I know, it's flamebait, but I feel it's true. SCSI had a time and place where it looked superior. But now, CPU usage for hdds is negligible, 150mbit/s transfer rates *pr* disk with SATA is on par with SCSI and ATA RAID is everywhere."

    Yes, it is flamebait. It is also a fallacy. 150mbit/s is something that SCSI did 10 years ago. Today it does 20 times that! Or were you suggesting 150MB/s? In which case that is also untrue. You do not get that kind of transfer speed out of an IDE bus. That is a theoretical maximum. Let alone "*pr*[sic]" disk. SATA being on par with SCSI is something that remains to be seen, so you can't make that claim either. Please show me the benchmark which has SATA beat Ultra320 SCSI, or even Ultra160 SCSI. If you can't produce that, please refrain from making comments like that.

    CPU usage is also not negligible. If you have to compensate with 2GHz+ CPUs to use IDE, the point is moot. Why pay $1,000 for a computer so that you can use IDE, when you can pay ten times less that to get your WORKING computer to use faster disks?

    --
    Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
  8. Re:Why SCSI?-Multi-paradigm. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Yea, but a 180G SCSI disk runs $1025 while the IDE version runs $288.

    I can buy a 4 way IDE raid unit from Promise (UltraTrak RM4000) for $280, then use 4 raided IDE disks over a single SCSI-160 channel.

    So, for about the same cost as a single SCSI drive I can get 4 drives in a 360GB, redundant 0+1, configuration. An IDE mirror out performs any single SCSI disk, hands down.

    So the best way to extend IDE disk in performance situations isn't with an add-on IDE card. If you've outgrown MOBO IDE, it is time to start leveraging SCSI. But, you can do so without foolishly buying SCSI drives.