CDFreaks Presents the Pioneer DVR-111 DVD Burner review



You can read the review here

Please feel free to comment on the review in this thread.

Well done Dee, thanks

A nice surprise!!!

I'm wondering, which part/sentence were edited out under Write Speed +R on page 1?

Hi
Thanks Dee.

Nothing was edited out as far as i'm aware. Are you referring to the specifications?

Yes, it seems that there is some sentence "overpainted" with a white stripe?!?

Thanks, i never noticed this when the review was published. The table which displayed the specifications wasn't formatted correctly. It should be fixed now.

Nice Review.

Yeah, excellent review. My respect.

Dee do you know if all DVR-111 drives come with those indentations in the casing? Call me lame but pretty funky looking..

I haven't seen the 111D model, but i would expect they all look the same at the top.

Hi
Yes they are.

Yep, they look identical. Mine arrived last week.

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Nice review Dee - thanks, it helped me make up my mind about which burner to buy and vindicated my decision not to get the 110D.


I've been doing some test burns with mine and found that on some blanks the drive spins down and then back up again to continue the writing process. Its happened on some CMC MAG AE1s [8x rated but burns at 12x in mine] and some RITEKF1s.

According to Nero they verify OK, and the buffer on the drive doesn't empty so I guess it must be the Pioneer equivalent of SMARTBurn doing it's job.

Is this expected or am I just being paranoid? This is my first high-speed DVD burner, my first was a Sony DRU-510A [4x] and so I've never seen this before.

I don't think my paranoia is helped by the fact that the bare drive I bought wasn't packed as well as I'd have hoped and not up to what I have come to expect from my favoured supplier.

For Orinoco.
Try to post your problem here (Pioneer DVR-111/D):
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=166764

Hi Orinoco
For 8x and 12x burns the DVR-111 and many other drives which use a Z-CLV writing method, the pause when changing speeds is quite normal. It is probably caused by the drive recalibrating the optics and laser power to continue with the burn.

Interesting, the instruction sheet suggests CAV for DVD-Rs at 8x and higher and the spin-downs weren't at places I would have suspected for Zone changes. If it really is a zone change, then it should repeat itself when I burn another 8x blank. Sadly, that was my last one......

I've only had one burn fail, and it was preceded by a spin down - the blank was faulty in that case.....

The spin-downs that I've had with the RITEKF1s were usually right at the end, so I'm still favouring the media quality which has been known to get a bit suspect at the outer edges - unless you have some different thoughts..?

Here is a 12x burn with a Sony 08D1 DVD-R media.
The yellow graph shows the drives rotational speed, the green graph shows the writing speed. It's very easy to see where the slowdowns occur.

Thanks Dee - I can't argue with that.....! Looks like the instruction sheet is wrong. It has a star where it should have a black triangle.

Can you crush the rest of my paranoia and explain the slow-down at the end of the RITEKF1 16x media?

With RiTek F1 indeed, it is probably the media itself that causes the slowdown. The drives AOPC system detects the burn is to fast to maintain quality, so slows the burn speed down.

BTW. 16x write speed is indeed CAV, and i've heard CAV is used for selected media at 12x, although i have never seen this with any media i have.

I'm not doubting what you say Dee that graph is more than enough proof, I was just daft enough to believe the instruction sheet that came with the drive..! I've attached a scan of the relevant bit.

If the RiTek F1 media isn't that good, what [reasonably priced] media would you recommend?

Ahh! this unit got some refreshing look!

Seriously, maybe they could move the led or the button arround the face plate to help us differentiate between their model.

On the other side I guess this help keep the cost down!

I was comparing the review at cdrinfo.com, and they found that the DVR-111 could not defeat the Key2Audio protected CD.

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Revi...16989&PageId=4

This is different from cdfreaks review which shows that the Pioneer drive defeated all audio protections including the Key2Audio. The only difference is that cdfreaks used firmware 1.06 and cdrinfo used 1.19. Has anyone tested the drive with 1.19 and Key2Audio? I am considering buying this drive and I want to make sure.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I just completed the "protected Audio Disc test" again with firmware 1.19.
It rips the data from my disc's without any problems.

I've just ordered a DVR-111 after a really **not** so impressive rendezvous with a Lite-on PS160 which was really dreadful. After reading absolutely tons of material it boiled down to this Pioneer model or the NEC ND-4570A and the Pioneer squeezed through on (good old fashioned...) looks!

It won't arrive for a couple of days and I wondered if anyone can give me the lowdown on the comments regards this drive needing a special 80 pin cable in order to achieve it's top end burn speeds?

My hardware's a very recent Shuttle which has an IDE cable on the primary IDE controller designed exclusively for the optical drive fitted to work as the Master IDE1 device - and this cable seems to have met the requirements of other burners OK... so do I need to go shopping for a better cable as well, or am I safe not to bother?

TiA for any advice...