In House Review - Pioneer DVR-R100 16x DVD±RW

[steven2874]

My goal for my media testing is to include a fair range of discs that people might find, no matter what part of the world they live in. To only test 2 or 3 media types would be very unprofessional in my opinion, not to mention utterly useless to a very large percentage of the people who use the drives I review.

At the very least if I wanted to only include professional level media, I'd have to test Taiyo Yuden, Verbatim, Maxell, Sony, TDK, Fuji, and potentially Mitsui. Including other major brands like Memorex, RiData, and BenQ, is never a bad idea either.

If anything, I'd like to EXPAND my media testing

Fair enough. This is one approach to testing a drive but very subjective. To the extent that the reviewer selects the media and not the burner manufacturer.
In other reviews I've read of the PIONEER 110 series the tester has mentioned the drive is an excellent performer with certain supported media and that the PIONEER is a poor choice if an extensive range of media types is required. I think this a fairer approach than calling the drive "lame".
As a real world example, I record satelite TV on a stand-alone Toshiba D-KR2 using Verbatim DVD-RW 2X discs. After recording and finalizing I transfer the program to my PC for editing and archiving to DVD-R and the -RW disc is used again. My BENQ 1640, a well regarded unit, does not even recognize the disc or the program material. The PIONEER handles it well. Does this make the BENQ "lame"? It is with this particular DVD-RW.
A more critical ommission by Dolphinius_Rex is not even mentioning in the review that many users have successfully cross-flashed this drive and now enjoy the benifits of 5X DVD-RAM reading/writing as an added bonus.

[Ian]

In other reviews I've read of the PIONEER 110 series the tester has mentioned the drive is an excellent performer with certain supported media and that the PIONEER is a poor choice if an extensive range of media types is required. I think this a fairer approach than calling the drive "lame".

That is exactly what Dolph did in his review. In fact, he points out that the drive works quite well with some media. Looking at the overall picture though.. he wasn't impressed. And yes.. lame probably wasn't the best word choice but the comment was made here in the forum and not in the review.

As far as cross flashing goes.. that really doesn't belong in the review. We took a retail product and its capabilities. We do not rate it higher because you can flash it with another firmware and get more capabilities.

[Scour]

I have to agree, so far my 110 has performed equally on high quality media, and outperforms my 1640 on cheaper media.

DVD+R or -R?

[dolphinius_rex]

By the way, if anyone has any need for a media type to be retested, I've got the 1.37 firmware for the DVR-R100 now (actually, it's cross flashed to an A10 now, but same firmware with respect to how it handles media).

I will *NOT* be retesting every media type though.

[eric93se]

I have to agree, so far my 110 has performed equally on high quality media, and outperforms my 1640 on cheaper media.

DVD+R or -R?

So far both! CMC MAG E01 and Ritek R05 so far. I promissed myself to never buy ritek again, but it was a good deal for white inkejet hub printables.

[dolphinius_rex]

I have to agree, so far my 110 has performed equally on high quality media, and outperforms my 1640 on cheaper media. People have to understand that the FW used on the review was old, most drives improve significantly after a few FW updates. Case in point, the 1640 wasn't made available in the US for 6 months, while EU and Asia got to play with early fw versions, however the 110D was available right away in the US.

Here's some comparison scans of Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD-Rs and Verbatim 8x DVD-Rs (both burned at 8x) on the Pioneer DVR-110 (firmware 1.37), and BenQ DW1640 (firmware BSMB).

As you can see, both drives are pretty equally matched when it comes to high quality media (as you said above). One thing I've noticed is that Jitter seems a little higher from the Pioneer DVR-110, but not on any serious level. PIE is a little lower (barely) from the DW1640, and PIF is a little higher from the DW1640 (again just barely).

[Muchin]

.....all the results on my newer 1635s drive are completely unrealistic compared to the performance of the disc on any range of drives. I'm seriously thinking of stopping LiteON scanning on my reviews in order to promote less confusion about the results. I'll give the 1635s one chance to proove it's not more of a danger then a benefit though.

It is very likely that you are going to be disappointed by Lite-On 1635 in use for PI error tests. Presumably it will behave like other drives of the 16xx series in this aspect, being too forgiving to many discs. That is why I do not consider reviews by another website very useful, the case with LG 4163B is a prime example. If you still want to use some Lite-On products for scanning, its DVD-ROM drives are much more discriminatory and tie up with Plextor 712 and AudioDev's CATS in many cases (based on data of my own and others).

[eric93se]

Care to see some low jitter . All of which are burned on the 110. The second scan was of a disc sticking to the one below it, it has a perfect transfer test.

[Ian]

Holy snikes! Those are some nice jitter levels.