Along with smaller cable size, one of the biggest benefits of Serial ATA is its ease of installation. Because it uses a point to point connection, setting jumpers has become a thing of the past. In most cases, installation is as simple as plugging in the SATA and power cables and turning the computer on. Needless to say, it took only a couple of minutes to install Pioneer's new DVD writer in our test computer. After making sure that the DVR-2929Q was recognized by Windows, I was ready to start installing the software.
Software Installation:
As I mentioned earlier, the DVR-2920Q comes with a CD full of software from Roxio and CinemaNow. If you have autorun enabled on your computer, the setup program will automatically launch when you insert the disc.
Installing the software is pretty straightfwoard. All you need to do is accept to the license agreement, enter your customer information and select your installation options. By default the setup program will install the entire suite onto your computer. If you don't want to install everything, select the custom installation. From here you can choose just the components you want.
Documentation:
The DVR-2920Q comes with a set of "Operating Instructions." While not very large, this manual is well laid out and contains a fair amount of useful information. It starts out by going over the features of the DVR-2920Q. This includes an extensive list of specs as well as a few diagrams showing all of the buttons and connectors on the front and back of the drive. Pioneer has done a great job here as everything is labeled clearly and the functions of each are explained very well.
From there, the manual jumps right into the physical installation of the drive. Unfortunately, this section is very brief and consists mainly of some written instructions describing how to install the drive in your computer and connect the cables. The manual finishes up with some information on the DVR-2920Q's Optimal Write Speed feature as well as a short troubleshooting section that explains how to manually eject a disc from the drive.
Like Pioneer's previous DVD writers, the DVR-2020Q was very easy to install. I had no problems getting the drive or the software installed and working. The documentation included with the drive is brief, but should be enough to get the drive up and running. Nevertheless, I would have liked to have seen some better installation instructions as well as some information on Qflix. With this in mind, the DVR-116D gets an 8 out of a possible 10 for this section of the review.
