Like the other Pioneer drives we've reviewed, the DVR-R100 was very easy to install. From start to finish, the entire process took only a few minutes. After taking the drive out of the box, I left the jumper set to master and installed it on the secondary IDE chain by connecting the IDE cable and power connector. When I turned on the computer the BIOS detected it as a drive supporting UDMA 66. After making sure that the DMA was enabled in the Device Manager, I was ready to start installing the software.
Software Installation:
As I mentioned earlier, the DVR-R100 comes with a CD full of software from Ulead Systems. If you have autorun enabled on your computer, the menu shown below will appear when you insert the disc. From here you can install the bundled software or check out the manuals.
Installing the Ulead DVD MovieFactory 4 suite is fairly straightforward. By default the setup program will install the entire suite onto your computer. If you don't want to install the entire suite, select the custom installation. From here you can choose the components you want to install. Unfortunately, you are still forced to install things like Photo Explorer and PictureShow. Personally, these are two programs I could do without.
If you run into trouble and need some help with the bundled software, the software CD contains a good amount of documentation in electronic format. The manuals on the disc go over the features of each application and cover a number of different topics.
Documentation:
The manual that comes with the DVR-R100 is a good example of what we've come to expect from Pioneer. While fairly compact, it is well laid out and contain a fair amount of useful information. The manual starts out by going over the DVR-R100's basic features. 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 and a single diagram showing how the IDE, power and audio cables should be connected. If you're wondering how the jumpers should be configured or how to do things like enable DMA, you're out of luck. You won't find that information in the manual.
Pioneer does make up for this somewhat by including what they call the "Drive Installation In An Instant". This small, one page guide takes you step by step through the installation process. It covers all the basics including how to set the jumpers, hook up the cables and physically install the drive in your computer. While this guide has diagrams showing the different jumper settings, I wish Pioneer would have included a few example IDE configurations to go along with them.
In the end, installing the DVR-R100 and the bundled software was pretty easy. The documentation that Pioneer has included with the drive is brief, but should be enough to get the drive up and running. Even then, I would have liked to have seen a little more information on how to do things like enable DMA. With this in mind, the DVR-R100 gets an 8 out of a possible 10 for this section of the review.
