Didn't check for DVD overburning. It became a pointless test as no new drives support the feature. I also think the CDR-Info conclusion on DVD overburning is incorrect.

The DVR-115D does support overburning of CD-R.

Also to clarify about the JMicron IDE controller. Vista 64bit supports it out the box with Microsoft's default IDE drivers. That's the ones i'm using, not JMicrons.

Hehe, glad my drive isn't the only one. Thought I was hearing things

So the 115D really is the cat's meow then?!

Haha! IMO, yes

To put it simply, NEC chipset drives sofar never supported DVD+R/-R overburn. (But this function is in no way only a chipset limitation though.)

Thanks again Dee-27.

OOPS my bad. I checked the Cdrinfo review properly. Guess what, it writes a fair number of discs with low errors! Probably the best results I've seen a DVD writer spit out on cdrinfo, so it's fairly unanimous that the 115/215 is quite a good drive! Most drives only burn one or two medias with acceptably low errors and fail on 90% of other discs but the Pioneer burns more than 50% of discs within limits on the ultra fussy Datarius professional scanning machine

http://cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/...2642&PageId=37

Yo-

Due to this review and other members experiences - I have added one each 115D to both of my systems (see below) and have observed the following:

No 'meows' from tray in/out movement on either-

Exceptionally good burning on both Verbatim and TY +R medias - and improved burning for both Verbatim MCC 03RG20 and TY 'Valueline' TYG02 -R's (all discs burned at 8x) and TY CD-R's (music at 16x and data at 24x)-

Currently my 'go to' burner for all my burning needs-eh

Why the spinup after inserting blank media?, annoying!!
My pc is in my bedroom and of all the drives i've purchased in 10 yrs this one has to spin up loudly for 15 seconds.

Because the speeds always depend on the MEDIA TYPE INSERTED.

I'm talking about once you add a blank, instead of like EVERY other drive i've owned it just reads it and is SILENT , This drive spin's up for 15 seconds. WHIRRRLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!! like it's burning, there's no need for this!!
reboot the Pc with a blank same WHIRLLLL then stop's, is this a PIONEER Trait?>?

No drive can READ a BLANK.
A different fimware can do some magic.

I presume you don't own a Lite-On drive... Then you (and your girl in bedroom) should have a lot to complain about.

Honestly, Pioneer (as all NEC shipset based) drives are some of the most silent ones when it come to pre-burn spinups.

The spinup when inserting blank media has served well for me.

1) it lets me know when my media is subpar [the drive spins down quickly after reaching the max RPM; Or I can tell from the amount of vibration whether or not I should attempt to write to the media at maximum speed].
2) it greatly decreases the time before actual writing of data occurs [the drive is already spun-up]

I assume that the spin-up is more for shortening the time required from the time you click "burn". Of course, that is only my uneducated guess. But even if that's not the reason, it works well for such.

Thanks albert for a reasonable answer, all i'm saying is this, of all my drives since there was one, dropping in a "blank" dvd or cd this drive spins out loudly for 15 seconds then stops, all my other 50 drives just quietly read what it was first before spinning up, i know it's great to cut down "lead in times", but i've never had this happen before with any other drive.
Benq 1640 still IMHO is prob the best ever all around burner ever made................

The DVR-115D is turning out to be one of the best DVD writers I've ever owned and I've owned plenty of them

this is funny,

i started burning in 1996 when CDs were 15$ a pop in quantities, with a pinnacle 1x scsi drive that cost 2500$ with the controller and took 5 weeks to setup on a 486dx2 pc so that it would output something else than coasters.

beginning of april, i got 4 of those brand-new DVR-115DBK and NONE will burn properly on Fuji DVD+R media that i previously found empirically to give best results with previous burners when i compare source files on hard drive with target on dvd using cdcheck 3.0.1.43. now it's not 1 or 2 coasters out of a 100 spindle, it's EVERY single one, even after going to v118 firmware. tried both pio and dma modes on the ide ports.

over the years, i compared for errors, every cd and dvd that came out of my PCs (~ 5000) and never had such consistently bad results. tried my second best choice memorex dvd+r same garbage out. the only way they will burn error-free is if i revert to memorex DVD-R (will try fuji dvd-r soon).

now i see this rosy review saying everything is fine with this burner and everyone in the forum agreeing it's the best thing since apple pie.

my questions are:

1 am i going crazy or is everyone still using dvd-r when they burn?

2 where is the detailed list of the media used in this review?

3 anyone got an idea on what is wrong? (i never go faster than 4x so the lasers will last the maximum possible time. my 2 main workhorses are a winxp dual core athlon 4200+ and a winxp athlon 2500+ and my mp3 server is a win2003server dell dual xeon ws530 with 1 terabyte raid-5 storage and 1 gig ECC ram).

thanks in advance to all who can figure this out so i can burn dvd+r like with the pioneer 112 and the 111 and 110 and the 108 and 107 and 105 i had before. and don't worry if you can't i'll get plextor next time and give out the pioneer come next christmas. cause i like mystery books and mystery movies but i hate mystery computer equipment.

Hi polbel, welcome to CDFreaks!

1) DVD+R is very popular on this board and I think a large percentage of the people here with Pioneer 115 series drives burn DVD+R (as well as DVD-R).

2) All the media used in the review is listed with the quality scans.

3) First I suggest doing some burns at 8x - newer drives have little to no testing for high-speed media burned at 4x, so you might be getting the least tested and worst possible results.

Did your problems coincide with starting on a new pack of Fuji/Memorex media? In other words, does the 115D fail on discs where your other drives succeed on disc from the same pack?

@ polbel,

Welcome to the Forum.Perhaps it would be beneficial if you reviewed the Disc Quality Scans posted in the “Pioneer DVR-115: Post your scans and questions here” (http://club.cdfreaks.com/newreply.ph...eply&p=1935713) thread and compare the “performance increase” when Media is Burned at a speed quicker than 4x speed.

Also when reviewing the Disc Quality Scans posted in the “Pioneer DVR-115: Post your scans and questions here” (http://club.cdfreaks.com/newreply.ph...eply&p=1935713) note that most of the Media branded with the “Memorex” brand name is not the best quality Media available. Using known proven quality error free Media such as Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim the Pioneer DVR-115D consistently produces quality error free results.

Also have you ensured that your Pioneer DVR-115D is correctly installed on the required Ultra DMA (80-Conductor) IDE/ATA Cable (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/id...Cable80-c.html) and operating in the Ultra DMA Mode 4?

If you review the Pioneer DVR 115d DVR Burner Review (http://www.cdfreaks.com/reviews/Pion...-Burner-Review) and view the DVR+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R DL/-R DL Writing Performance write ups it provides very detailed information on exactly what particular Media was used in the Test Review of the Pioneer DVR-115D Drive.

Regards,
bjkg

News Update:

after burning at 4x 100 memorex dvd-r i risked it again with 50 fuji dvd+r at 8x and must admit that the 4x mode is no good with dvd+r but 8x does ok with dvd+r on these drives. now it's the last time i buy ide drives since that interface barely supports 11 MB bandwidth necessary not to mention 16x. so from now on i get sata burners if i must go for these speeds. thanks everyone for all your kind advice, and hope i too can be of help in the future.

:-)

@ polbel,

Before being judgmental perhaps you should take some time and acquire some knowledge concerning Media manufactures.

Memorex doesn’t manufacture ANY Media. Memorex branded Media is actually manufactured by many Media manufactures. So stating Memorex DVD-R Media you could possibly be referring to DVR-R Media manufactured by 5 to 7 different Media manufactures. A majority of Memorex branded Media is poor quality problematic Media.

Concerning FujiFilm Media. FujiFilm does not manufacture the majority of the FujiFilm branded Media but is sub-contracted to a couple of different Media manufactures. FujiFilm branded Media quality can be quite variable.

From your comments it is CLEARY evident that you have failed the review the Disk Quality Scans data as suggested in posting #43. If you had you would easily see that the IDE Pioneer DVR-115D successfully burns Quality DVD Media at speed 16x speeds.

There is noting wrong with new modern IDE DVD Burners especially not the Pioneer DVR-115D. An Ultra DMA (80-Conductor) IDE/ATA Cable will provide more than ample throughput to successful Burn Quality DVD Media at 18x speed. Note I stated Quality DVD Media and not the known poor quality problematic Memorex branded Media you have been attempting to use.

From your comments your problem in obtaining quality error free ‘high speed’ Burning results is not an IDE “Bandwidth” problem but is a problem with the use of poor quality problematic that prevents you from obtaining quality error free ‘high speed’ Burning results. Use known proven quality error free Media such as Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim and your IDE Pioneer DVR-115D will consistently produce ‘high speed’ quality error free Burning results.

Regards,
bjkg

thanks for the quick reply bjkg.

i did read the scan data, i do use 80-conductor cable and cmos setup does indicate udma4. the fuji dvd-r that dont work at 4x but work at 8x are ritek f16 and the memorex dvd-r that work both at 4x and 8x are ritekf1 from nero infotool. i installed the latest miniport driver from asus for my dual-core athlon 4200+ motherboard. i have been a computer maintenance technician since 1979 when minicomputers had magnetic torus core memory boards. i understand that ata-133 interface gives 133 megabytes/sec bandwidth that is 6 times more than 16x 22 megabytes/sec burning demands. but still at 8x the drive led on the front panel turns on and off during the burn process. i know its ok because burnproof technology ensures that even if burning stops and goes the drive still comes out with a good dvd. i buy these brand dvds instead of verbatim or Taiyo Yuden because stores here have sales that i buy 5 or 10 100-packs at 22 $ (18 euros) each making for a price of storage of 1/4 of hard disks. verbatim are 100 $ (75 euros) for a 100-pack so i might as well keep my files on a 500 GB hard drive which costs about the same and has much faster access time. the way it's going, storage on terabyte drives will be cheaper than on quality dvds in a year, so a computer with a 3 terabyte raid-5 array (4x1TB) will be both affordable and as secure for data as dvd, while allowing instant access to files, so i probably won't even need sata burners. i appreciate all the help you give me, many thanks for this also.

did you happen to see this post?
http://club.cdfreaks.com/2066893-post776.html

thanks troy512, but as mentioned in post 41 at the end of second paragraph there was no difference from going to firmware 1.18 from 1.13 that was in before. my source drive is maxtor 6V300F0 sata2 for the files to burn, atapi.sys is 5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158) and motherboard is asusa8r-mvp with athlon 64x2 dual-core 4200+ cpu 1gig 162ns ram. by giving affinity to processor 1 for alltoavi for compressing mpeg transport stream files to avi and affinity to processor 0 to os and nero i can burn all evening and compress about 24/7 the satellite captures my receiver makes on usb drives.
the only thing that made a real difference was burning at 8x instead of 4x to make 19/20 dvds compare 100% ok with source files. i insist on this compare instead of just a verify that checks for read errors on target but doesn't completely ensure identical files on source and target. even if the crc check doesn't say something is wrong it doesn't mean the files are totally ok.