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CNET editors' rating:
3.5 stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 30 reviews
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Product summary
The good: Burns DVD movies quickly on DVD-R; writes to CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, and DVD-RW media; improved CD and DVD read performance.
The bad: Slow write and rewrite speeds; closes DVD discs slowly.
The bottom line: The DVR-A04 works great at creating highly compatible, inexpensive DVD movie discs, but the upcoming DVD+RW drives could beat it on speed and compatibility, so we'd wait before buying.
Specifications: CD / DVD type: DVD-RW; CD / DVD read speed: 24x (CD) / 6x (DVD); CD / DVD write speed: 8x (CD) / 2x (DVD); See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 05/07/2002
 Editors' note:
Pioneer has announced that the new 4X DVD-R and 2X DVD-RW media can potentially cause serious damage to many of its existing DVD-R/RW drives, including the DVR-A04. However, the company claims that you can fix the problem by downloading a free firmware update from its Web site before using the high-speed media. |
Longtime market leader Pioneer has launched a preemptive strike at the DVD+RW crowd with its new $499 DVR-A04 DVD-RW drive. It can't match the overall speed promises of next-generation DVD+RW drives, and it offers only minor improvements over its DVR-A03 (a.k.a. the Apple SuperDrive) predecessor, but the DVR-A04's DVD-R media is the most compatible of all the recordable/rewritable formats. DVD-R technology also has a large installed base, broad software support, and relatively cheap media, making it a safe bet for burning movies. But if the upcoming DVD+RW drives deliver greater compatibility and faster speed, Pioneer's drive will have a tougher time luring buyers.(Updated 9/25/02)
| Editors' note:
Pioneer has announced that the new 4X DVD-R and 2X DVD-RW media can potentially cause serious damage to many of its existing DVD-R/RW drives, including the DVR-A04. However, the company claims that you can fix the problem by downloading a free firmware update from its Web site before using the high-speed media. |
Longtime market leader Pioneer has launched a preemptive strike at the DVD+RW crowd with its new $499 DVR-A04 DVD-RW drive. It can't match the overall speed promises of next-generation DVD+RW drives, and it offers only minor improvements over its DVR-A03 (a.k.a. the Apple SuperDrive) predecessor, but the DVR-A04's DVD-R media is the most compatible of all the recordable/rewritable formats. DVD-R technology also has a large installed base, broad software support, and relatively cheap media, making it a safe bet for burning movies. But if the upcoming DVD+RW drives deliver greater compatibility and faster speed, Pioneer's drive will have a tougher time luring buyers.
Box lunch
The DVR-A04 comes boxed with an EIDE cable, audio cable, screws, an emergency eject tool, and informative hardware and software installation guides. Installation requires opening up your system, setting a jumper, mounting the drive in a free front-accessible drive bay, and attaching power and drive cables; make sure you have a techie friend handy if you find this process daunting. The drive is compatible with Windows 98 and up.
Pioneer bundles a copious collection of software to cover the myriad disc-writing tasks the DVR-A04 can perform. Sonic's MyDVD handles authoring and burning chores for DVD movies; Veritas's RecordNow takes care of mastering both writable and rewritable DVDs and CDs; and Veritas's DLA (Drive Letter Access) sits in the background to provide Window's drag-and-drop packet-writing. CyberLink's PowerDVD XP 4.0 is bundled for DVD-movie playback.
By the numbers
The DVR-A04 offers a few improvements over the DVR-A03. It reads DVD-ROM at 6X (up from 4X) and CD-ROM at 24X (up from 16X). It also offers buffer-underrun protection for CD-Rs and accepts high-speed CD-RWs, which the DVR-A03 often failed to recognize. Unfortunately, the Pioneer's speeds for DVD rewriting and CD writing/rewriting haven't increased to match those of the DVD+RW competition. The DVR-A04 rewrites to DVD-RW at only 1X, compared to a DVD+RW drive's 2.4X speed. Also, the Pioneer writes CD-R and CD-RW at 8X and 4X (respectively)--slothful compared to a DVD+RW drive's 12X and a DVD+R's 10X rates. The DVR-A04 matches up better with write-once media; its 2X DVD-R write speed is only slightly slower than a DVD+RW drive's 2.4X DVD+R write speed.
However, those speed ratings do not take into account the ponderous amount of time the DVR-A04 takes to close discs--a known weakness among Pioneer drives. But though this expanse of time is considerably longer than a DVD+RW drive's, it doesn't significantly increase with the amount of data written. If we had burned a full disc instead of the 1GB or so we wrote, total write times would've more closely matched the drive's ratings. In CNET Labs' tests, the DVR-A04 burned a 959MB MPEG to DVD-R in 7 minutes, 23 seconds (about 2.17MB per second); packet-wrote a 500MB batch of test files to DVD-RW in 6 minutes, 35 seconds; and wrote a single 383MB file to DVD-RW in 4 minutes, 40 seconds. Reading back the 500MB batch of files took an indolent 9 minutes, 49 seconds, while reading the single 383MB file took only 4 minutes, 42 seconds. We ran no official tests on the DVR-A04's CD-R and CD-RW write performance, but in anecdotal testing, it performed as expected for a drive with 8X/4X ratings, and it also played back DVD movies without a hitch. Continue reading
User reviews
- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 30 reviews
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