Pioneer DVR 108 review

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Posted on 29 Nov 2004 by SirQUK

Conclusion

Pioneer have long established a name that stands for quality with a track record of high end DVD products. With high recording speeds of up to 16x on our Traxadata pre-release sample DVD+R media as well as achieving some very good transfer speeds for both pressed and recordable DVD.

The major feature in our eyes about the Pioneer DVR 108 is its ability to over burn certain Pioneer certified media successfully past their rated recording speeds. 12x single layer and 4x Double Layer over burning was achieved easily and without error on our review media but the Mirror Platinum 8x-R media which seemed to exhibit a strange spiking effect around the point the 12x over burn took effect.

Very low errors where reported during K-Probe scans of the recorded media. and during our tests the drive reached transfer speeds of up to 13x ripping in DVD Decrypter for some DVD media as well as reaching speeds of up to 40x for both pressed and recordable CD media.

Curiously, as with the NEC 2510A review we noticed that the Pioneer DVR 108 automatically chose to write DVD+R D/L media with a book type of DVD-ROM for better playback compatibility on standalone DVD players but there was no option for changing the book type of DVD+R media which we would of liked to have seen unlike the BenQ 1600 which came with a utility that would allow for custom changing of DVD+R/RW and DVD+R D/L media. Now add the fact that it records CDR media at 32x as well as high speed CDRW media at 24x and you have one very versatile and appealing drive.

Double Layer over burning tests on the Verbatim media where very good with the drive recognising and recording to the media at the rated 4x, with the media being playable without a problem, and under firmware v1.10 the Traxdata 2.4x DVD+R D/L media was recorded successfully to at its rated speed of 2.4x. With the book type of the DVD+R D/L media changed to DVD-ROM ( the same as an original pressed Video DVD ), the very fussy Cyberhome 512 standalone DVD player played the disc perfectly where it would not normally play the media with its original book type without constant jerking being displayed. With the introduction of Dual Layer recordable media becoming more widespread with it is nice to know that this drive fully supports the reading of recordable D/L straight 'out of the box' without any firmware adjustments being needed.

The 16x DVD+R recording speed was achieved with our pre sample Traxdata 16x+R media, and we will update this review with the results of these and other 16x tests when more 16x DVD+/-R rated media are available for us to test with.

The drive also scored a very pleasing perfect 100 in our CD Speed Advanced DAE transfer tests, and no sync errors where found during the tests, even when extracting an Audio CD at its fastest possible speed and with firmware v1.10 the drive had no problems recording any of the tested media at its rated speed and all DVD Video compilations recorded for tests during this review where playable in our standalone players used for playback tests.

CDR-Zone.COM can only say good things about this drives DVD media recording capabilities and have no problem recommending it to our readers as a drive that can record both modern 16x single layer media at its rated speed as well as good compatibility with high grade Pioneer certified 8x media being over burnt at 12x although our e-proformace 8x-R media manufactured with the ProDisc S04 dye are only recognised at 4x under the present firmware ( but this was the only media not correctly recognised that we had available to test ) .

Of interest it is possible to get a adjusted firmware which allows 16x maximum over burning to an even wider range of media then that of the default Pioneer firmware and some good results have been noted on some established forums around the CDR world, although we did not test this firmware during our review and must warn you that although good results are being reported, this will still invalidate your warranty and Pioneer offer no official support for these adjusted firmware's.

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