CD Freaks Presents
The Pioneer DVR-112D DVD Burner Review



You can read the review here
Please feel free to comment in this forum thread.

Thank you Dee. Good job!

Edit:
These 2 entries in Conclusion/Negative are the same problems i had with the 3 i tried. All 3 had Nov/2006 dates on them.
* Some problems with writing quality with our tested DVD+R DL media

* Some DVD+R media was written slower than its rated speed.

A lot of people have had good luck with this drive but not me.

Great review, thanks Dee, enjoyed reading it (started to read as soon as you put the post up)

Glad to see there was no problem burning CDr. I am getting my 2nd 112D as it would not complete burning of CDr. There are many others who have had this same problem.. Could be limited to some early productions problems.

Thanks for the review, Dee-27!

This looks like a very nice drive, except for the usual limitations with Pioneer drives - no bitsetting for DVD+R Single Layer media with official firmware and slower reading speeds than the fastest drives on the market.

Thanks for the review, Dee-27.


At least it rips commercial pressed DVDs faster than the LG H42N does.

Are you sure it does Disc Scan Quality? I've tried scanning a few things before and after applying 1.15 (from 1.09) firmware and it always gives me weird results. A couple big red spikes in the botton graph halfway through and quality score just drops to 0. Is this one of those drives that "can" but can't be relied on to do it?

Off topic:
Could be.

Can you put it in a different pc and try it out? That would help rule a few things out. Pioneers are not very good at quality scans.

You should start a thread about your problem.

I've had it for about two months now, and it is just fine.
I like litey myself, and have a range of those, but when I read about 112, I decided to try.
The only thing that is really annoying, is the 80 wire cable.
It would not be a problem if it is one pc, and that works, but on older pc's (motherboards) like sub 2 ghz, 80, 40 wire, does not change a thing, it burns at 2x, and that is it.
It is contrary to being media picky, it is motherboard picky.
That, and the fact that I had to install the newest nero, to recognize it.
Other than that, and the fact that it has been crippled with read-only and not write support for DVD-RAM, I could say they've done a good job.
Review just proved my opinion, thank you very much for it.

Regards

D

I have to with you. I had my 112D in a Asus socket 462 mobo along with 3 other dvd burners all using a 80 conductor ide cable with no problems whatsoever. I even have Nero burn installed in that computer which doesn't have the latest version. Your updating to the latest Nero had nothing to do with the drive being able to burn correctly. IMHO Nero isn't the best burning software out there, ImgBurn is my choice to use for dvd burning. I suspect there was a software conflict which caused your drive to burn only at 2x speed or you drive wasn't in udma 4 mode.

I don't scan that much to call it a problem
I'm sure the burns are fine

i just bought an DVR-112D and im wondering where i can change the bitsetting to DVD-ROM ? I want to burn an DVD+R DL Verbatim as DVD-ROM but im not able to change this setting... do i need an firmware upgrade or how can i change it??

The 112d will do this automaticly but only for DL disc.

Good to see a fussy drive like the optiarc for TRT in the review

If you flash to 111L, does that enable DVDRAM burning or not?

EDIT: I have to say one thing though about the reviews, I find it a bit odd that in some reviews, if the drive does not burn above the supported write speed with good quality, it is put down as negative.

I think that's somewhat wrong to say there are issues with the 10x DL writing performance as the +R disc was written above it's supported speed. I think the same for any 18-20x writing done on 16x media. If you test drive a car that has a claimed max speed of 280, the tires are rated to withstand speeds of only 250, you take the car to 270 and the tires blow out, you can't really blame the car since the tires aren't specified to take more than 250.

But then again, pioneer should not have allowed that media to write @ 10x if it didn't do it with good quality

The DVR-112 burned the 8x Verbatim DL media with great quality at 10x. And this is the problem when the envelope is pushed. (burned faster than it's rated speed). A tiny difference in the drives calibration can make a huge difference to the result.

Research shows that most users burn media as fast as the drive will allow. Here on CDF the knowledgeable people know this is not always the best solution. However, we think it is legitimate to test the drive according to the manufacturers claims. In other words, at the max speed allowed and judge the result.

BTW: I always have used NEC/Optiarc drives for Transfer Rate Tests, for the very reason that they are picky.

Yeah I agree with you 100% on that now. If the manufacturer can't make the discs burn nicely @ the speeds they allow, it's their own fault.

I wonder if 8x would have even made a difference, it seemed like it was struggling in the TRT before it got to 10x.