Pioneer's DVR-A06 offers a great out-of-the-box DVD burning experience, with a solid software selection and speedy reliable writing to boot. Check out our Australian review.

While Sony still sits undeniably on top of the heap with its fast multiformat DRU-510A drive, it has more and more competitors nipping daily at its heels. The latest contender for the throne is Pioneer, with the DVR-A06 dual format burner. If for nothing else, we've got to commend Pioneer on a sensible naming scheme. The A06 is the sixth generation of burner Pioneer's put out, and a heck of a lot easier to request from a salesperson than the usual string of digits that pass for product suffixes these days.

Installation of the drive follows the usual IDE conventions. For anyone nervous, the supplied booklet is well laid out and easy to follow. The drive itself is decked out in the normal beige facing of most drives. Like the DRU-510A, it lacks for a front headphone socket, although Pioneer has seen fit to include an audio cable in the package, something that Sony's burner lacks.

Something else that you couldn't accuse the A06 of lacking is included software. Two application CDs include Ulead's DVD Workshop LE (with an integrated Dolby AC-3 encoder), Video Studio 7.0 DVD SE, DVD Picture Show 2.0 SE, DVD Movie Factory, Burn Now and DVD Player. Lest the package be too top-heavy on Ulead titles, Nero Express 5.5 rounds out the offering, and there's precious little we can think of to legally do with a burner that the software on offer here doesn't cover.

The other two discs you'll find in the box are two pieces of blank media. The single DVD-R disc is of little surprise; Pioneer sits in the DVD minus camp, politically speaking. The inclusion of a single DVD-RW disc is also understandable, but not the best way to show off the drive, which can write to DVD+RW media more quickly than DVD-RW.

From a technical perspective, there's not much difference between the A06 and Iomega's Dual DVD Drive; both offer 4x burning for DVD-R and DVD+R media, with 2x DVD-RW and 2.4x DVD+RW burning. It's also a 16x-capable CD-R and 10x CD-RW burner. That still puts the A06 behind Sony's DRU-510A, which can write to DVD+RW media at a blistering 4x rate, although the media capable of that speed it still priced fairly steeply. About our only complaint with the A06 from a tech perspective is the rather measly 2MB memory cache; most modern drives tend towards 8MB. The drive utilises BURN-Proof technology (licensed from Sanyo) but 2MB of memory could still lead to burning issues in certain situations.

The DVR-A06 utilises a liquid crystal tilt mechanism to optimise laser performance across variable disc surfaces where most other drives use mechanical tilt mechanisms to the same effect; in theory the faster response rate of the Liquid Crystal mechanism should keep the A06's writing consistent and accurate.

That's a matter for testing, and in our tests we were extremely impressed with the A06. Filling up DVD-R media took a speedy 13:35. With DVD+RW media we weren't expecting the drive to top the DRU-510A, which managed to write our test directory in 1:35, but the 2:45 that the Pioneer managed is hardly shabby; it's a solid 44 seconds ahead of the Iomega Dual DVD burner, for a start. Writing back to the drive from DVD+RW media took 2:08, again beating out the Iomega drive by 21 seconds.

Pioneer sells the DVR-A06 for AU$599, the same retail price as the Iomega and AU$100 cheaper than Sony's drive, and at that price we reckon it's an absolute bargain; it's fast, stacked to the gills with useful software and writes to all the major formats. With a little careful shopping it's quite easy to pick up the A06 for less than retail price, although a quick trawl through newsgroup aus.dvd did show some retailers selling the drive in an OEM configuration sans software; while you might save a few dollars that way you'd be missing out on what is an excellently rounded overall package.

Pioneer DVR-A06
Company: Pioneer Australia
Price: AU$599
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 666 383

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