CNET editors' review
-
CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 08/04/2003
- Released on: 06/01/2003
Installing the DVR-A06, like setting up any internal drive, is a piece of cake--if you know what you're doing. Otherwise, cook dinner for the techie in your life. The multilingual setup guide provides the basic facts and nothing more. Pioneer includes the bare essentials: an analog drive-to-sound-card audio cable and mounting screws. There's no IDE cable, but the odds are pretty good that you already have one inside your PC. The DVR-A06 is compatible with all Microsoft operating systems, from Windows 98 SE onward, but there's no Mac support. The DVR-A06 also doesn't support Mount Rainier (Philips's CD-RW-as-floppy initiative).
We had problems installing the DVR-A06's software bundle; the install routine reported a conflict between the DVR-A06's packet-writing software and a previously installed packet-writing application that had since been removed. Admittedly, this wouldn't have happened on a clean system, but that's no excuse for the install routine to quit unceremoniously and force us to install all the packages separately.
When the install routine encountered remnants of a previously removed packet-writing app, it forced us to install all the packages separately.
The DVR-A06 writes DVD-R and DVD+R at 4X; DVD-RW at 2X; and DVD+RW at 2.4X; CD-R at 16X; and CD-RW at 10X. It also reads DVD-ROM at 12X, DVD recordable/rewritable at 6X, and CD-ROM at 32X. A drive this versatile will undoubtedly be the only optical drive in many computers, so we had to wonder why Pioneer neglected to include a headphone jack and a volume control in the front panel. Even $50 CD-RW drives have them, and the absence of these amenities on a $329 drive is downright weird. Thankfully, the standard eject button, the emergency eject hole, and the power/busy light are present, and the back of the drive offers the full array of IDE and power connectors, digital and analog audio ports, and drive jumpers.
Pioneer takes a path slightly less traveled with the DVR-A06 software, offering up a number of Ulead titles that are less commonly bundled than others in this category. VideoStudio 7.0 SE DVD is there for video editing and movie authoring; DVD PictureShow 2.0 SE, creates slide shows on CD or DVD; and Ulead Burn plays DVDs. Nero Express handles mastering chores such as creating data and audio CDs, as well as movie DVDs; packet writing is left to Software Architect's WriteDVD, which caused performance problems during our testing. Overall, the DVR-A05 had a stronger set of software.
The DVR-A06 comes with VideoStudio 7.0 SE DVD for video editing.
Despite its newfound ability to write to DVD+RW, the DVR-A06's performance left us cold--falling short of its DVR-A05 predecessor's in several areas. While it mastered DVD movie discs and read data DVDs faster than the DVR-A05, rewrite performance was a horror story, taking up to 20 times longer to write our test files than the older model. This was likely the fault of Software Architects' WriteDVD packet-writing software; when we tested informally using Ahead Software's InCD, performance fell more in line with the drive's ratings. Unfortunately, the current version of InCD didn't fully support the DVR-A06, although Ahead claims the next one will. Unless you already have packet-writing software that you know supports the DVR-A06, we recommend waiting for Pioneer to fix this problem before making rewriting a part of your burning plans.
Movie-write tests (Longer bars indicate better performance)
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
| Note: Compression rates may vary, so write speed is measured in megabytes per second. |
Write tests (Shorter bars indicate better performance)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
| Note: Time in minutes. |
Read tests (Shorter bars indicate better performance)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
| Note: Time in minutes. |
All write tests are run with both the drive's recommended media (submitted by the manufacturer) and with Verbatim media, rated at the drive's maximum speed. For more details on how we test CD-recordable drives, see the CNET Labs site.
Online support for DVR-A06 had not been implemented in time for this review. We hope it will be as comprehensive as what Pioneer provides for the DVR-A03, the DVD-A04, and the DVR-A05, including manuals, white papers, driver downloads, software updates, and even firmware upgrades for all the previous DVR products. The Pioneer DVR-A06 is backed by the industry-standard one-year warranty, and toll-free telephone support is available Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT. We think it's cool that the company picks up the tab on long-distance calls, but we'd like to see some extended hours and weekend support for home users.
To find out more about how this product's warranty really stacks up and what you should look for in a vendor's service and support, take a look at CNET's hardware warranty explainer.
Most helpful user reviews
- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 9 reviews
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
Submit your review
