Pioneer DVR-109

Review Pages

Pioneer DVR-109 Burner- Page 10

DVD Recording Tests

- Writing Performance

The main differences between the DVR-108 and DVR-109 are, the increase in DVD-RW and DVD+RW speeds up to 6X and 8X respectively and the adoption of the DVD-R DL format. Both DVD±R DL media can be burned up to 6X (CLV), which is at the very least, impressive. The exact same recording speeds are present with Plextor's PX-716A, while the NEC ND-3520A is somewhat slower, mainly with the DVD±R DL format (only 4X). Nero Burning Rom reported speeds are shown below, after inserting DVD-R and DVD+R 16X certified discs.

While Pioneer reports CAV/PCAV writing technology for all writing speeds above 6X (8X/12X/16X), with the 1.17 firmware, several media are supported at 12X burning with Z-CLV and not P-CAV. We assume that newer firmware will support more media with the CAV/PCAV writing technology... By using Nero CD-DVD Speed with DVD-R and DVD+R media, we are able to see the supported writng strategy for each speed and format for this burner. Click on each image below for a complete CDSpeed graph.

DVD+R media @ 16X

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DVD+R media @ 12X

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DVD+R media @ 8X

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DVD-R media @ 16X

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DVD-R media @ 12X

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DVD-R media @ 8X

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DVD+RW media @ 8X

We didn't manage to perform an 8X DVD+RW burning. Currently only 4X can be confirmed and its writing strategy is CLV. This is something that is also confirmed by the official supported media list from Pioneer, which you can see on the next page. We expect new firmware to support the 8X writing speed.

DVD-RW media @ 6X

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- Burning Tests

We burned 4315MB of data on various DVD±R, DVD±RW media. We used the maximum allowed writing speed for each disc.

DVD-R/-RW media

Not many DVD-R media are supported at 16X. The lowest recording time was 5:54mins with TDK's TTH02 media. Many 8X media are oversped by Pioneer up to 12X, with more or less the same recording times. While RitekG05 is supported at 12X, the actual recording done is at 8X, as the final recording time indicates...

DVD+R/+RW media

Once again, not many media are supported at 16X. The lowest recording time of 5:34mins is very good, again several 8X media can be oversped up to 12X. Lastly, many 8X media, unfortunately, are supported only at 4X. Hopefully newer firmware will fix this.

- Comparison with other drives

The Pioneer DVR-109 proved to be the fastest burner in this comparison, for both DVD±R formats! The NEC ND-3520A was the fastest (but the other drives don't yet support 8X +RW), while the DVR-109 is the fastest with DVD-RW!

- DVD Overburning Tests

Using Nero CD-DVD Speed, we tested to see if the drive can overburn using DVD+R and DVD-R media. Unfortunately, the drive does not support overburning, giving the following error with all inserted media.