Pioneer DVD±RW DVR-107D - Page 1

Pioneer enters the 8x DVD recording market with the new DVR-107D. Being the first 8x DVD burner offering this speed for DVD±R and 4x for DVD±RW, the drive brings the anticipated "balance" in the recording speeds of the +R/RW and the -R/RW formats. With NEC (ND-2500A) and LiteOn (SOHW-812S) as its main competitors in the retail market, the benchmark results of Pioneer DVR-107D would be interesting to most of you.

- Features

Pioneer's DVR-107D offers wider compatibility compared to previous Pioneer DVD writers, supporting high speed writing with various media. DVD±R writing at 8x and DVD±RW at 4x. Moreover, Pioneer has developed a series of technologies with the aim towards the improvement of final recording performance.

• Precision Recording Technology

Precision Recording Technology utilizes an auto-adjustable writing technique to enable recording under the best conditions for each disc characteristic at all times. This technology, first introduced in the DVR-A06, enables the DVR-107D to achieve optimal initial writing performance and helps to minimize the normal deterioration of re-recordable discs due to repeated writing. As a result, the quality for repeatedly used DVD-RW discs is up to 10 times better than previous writers.

The drive also uses an industry- first DRT-DM (Distributed Real Time Defect Management) offering a form of defect management that conforms to the DVD format without sacrificing write performance. The result is compatible writing even on discs that have been rewritten many times, without causing a degradation of disc quality.

• Ultra DRA (Dynamic Resonance Absorber)

Imbalanced discs can cause vibrations that affect performance during high speed recording and playback. An Ultra Dynamic Resonance Absorber reduces vibrations that can affect performance during high-speed recording and playback of some discs. With this feature, the high precision servo system remains stable during both high-speed recording and playback.

In the picture below you can see the Ultra DRA effect on the total vibrations of the drive. The feature reduces the vibrations by 65% at 9200rpm rotation speed.

• Smart laser drive technology

Pioneer’s advanced laser drive uses a pickup that incorporates a write strategy control circuit, ensuring stable write performance at high speed recording.

• Liquid crystal tilt technology

Pioneer’s liquid crystal tilt mechanism provides accurate and reliable operation with discs having uneven curvature or thickness. This mechanism is used for both recording and playback.

- Specifications

The drive uses a 2MB buffer memory. The RAW DAO 96 writing (CD) is supported while Mount Rainier is not.

The Pioneer DVR-107D uses the RPC II region control, allowing a user to change the drive's region at most 5 times. For our tests, we set the region code to 2 (Europe).

- Retail package

In our labs we received a sample engineers version of the Pioneer drive, having come without logos, as can be seen on the following pictures.

Pioneer Europe will not be releasing a "retail" version of the DVR-107D, due to the lack of 8X media at the time. As well, there is only a short period between the DVR-A07 and the DVR-A07XL (Advance). This will be on-sale in Europe as a retail product by approximately Mid-March.

In the retail version (picture above) available in Australia and US, however, the included software is:

Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3 Disc Creator allows you to burn movies, slideshows, data and music to CD or DVD in an instant.

Ulead Video Studio 7SE allows first-time users to easily create professional-looking video. Ulead Photo Explorer 8.0 provides an efficient way to transfer, browse, modify and distribute digital media.
Ulead My Scrapbook 2 offers everything the scrapbooker needs to create scrapbook pages, clip art and titles on the computer.
Ulead Burn.Now is easy to use disc recording software. Users can take full advantage of their CD/DVD burner to create data and audio discs plus copy discs.
Ulead DVD Player offers high compatibility and plays commercial DVDs and DVDs created by other Ulead products.
NovaBACKUP 7.1 allows you to back up your computer to just about any tape drive, hard disk, removable, CD-R/RW or DVD drive.

- The drive

As was previously mentioned there is no Pioneer logo on the drive's front panel since we received a sample version. The drive's front panel is colored light gray and despite being a sample version, has the CD-RW and both the +RW and -RW logos. On the right is the eject button and next to it two ventilation holes just like in previous Pioneer writers. The activity led indicator is placed left of the ventilation holes and further left is the emergency eject hole.

On the rear panel there are the analogue audio output, the IDE connector and the power input.

Removing the screws and opening the drive's cover voids the drive's warranty. For reference reasons, we post the following pictures.

- Installation

The Pioneer drive was connected to our test PC and was identified as "Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-107D" under WinXP. All tests were done with firmware v1.05.

The following pages include the test results of the Pioneer drive in comparison to two other dual DVD burners, the new Sony DRU-503A and the Plextor PX-708A