At last, DVD-R has arrived. Pioneer's DVR-AO3 is the first DVD recorder to the hit the market at under AU$2,100. This internal ATAPI drive can read and write to CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, and DVD-RW media. "That's great," you say, "But can I burn a DVD movie from my computer that plays in my living room DVD player?" The short answer is yes, you can. And the drive will ship with software that will help you do it.
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For propeller heads more interested in the drive's performance over its ability to burn DVD movies, we hate to tell you that you're not getting a speed demon here. It shouldn't surprise you that software and firmware immaturity yielded modest results. Currently, the fastest 2x burns still require a complete "test burn" first (just like the early days of CD-R), resulting in effective 1x speeds.
For our video DVD tests, we used Pinnacle Systems' Studio DV video editor and Sonic Solution's DVDit authoring software, both of which are included in new Compaq systems that offer this drive as an option. iMovie and iDVD are bundled with Apple G4 systems that offer the Pioneer drive. We brought DV camcorder footage into Studio DV, created MPEG-2 movies, imported them into DVD, created navigation menus, and burned the discs.
We then grabbed our discs and trucked on down to our local electronics store to put them to the test, dropping them in every DVD player in sight. Results were impressive. Our discs played in all the latest players from Denon, Panasonic, Pioneer, Sony, Toshiba, and Yamaha. We did find, however, a couple of "last generation" models from Toshiba and Mitsubishi that didn't recognise any of our discs; we would expect other older players to have similar trouble.
The authoring process was also straightforward. We do, however, strongly recommend avoiding DVDit's current built-in MPEG encoder unless you have a Cray supercomputer. Our 933MHz test-machine took close to one hour to process each minute of video. StudioDV can also encode MPEG-2 and did the same in about 3 minutes.
For those of you out there thinking about pirating your favourite DVD movies, we have sad news to report. The DVR-A03 is unable to write to the section of a DVD disc that holds a DVD movie's copyright, region encoding, and encryption information. That means the drive may copy the video, but the new disc won't have the key to unlock and play it. We should also note that while the RW capabilities of the drive worked as advertised, you'll want to make sure the RW media you buy is version 1.1 or later. 1.1 RW media will play DVD movies in most (if not all) new DVD players; version 1.0 RW media will not play in DVD players.
With an expected list price near AU$2,000, Pioneer's DVR-A03 isn't a gimme, but it's a huge jump down in price from the previous low of AU$10,000 for a DVD-R drive.
With Apple and Compaq already embracing the DVR-A03 and, especially Apple (G4 Super drive), marketing video as the next cool thing to do with a computer, digital video could finally reach its long awaited consumer potential. We're a nation of video watchers. DVD-R may be the piece that makes us video-makers as well.
Unfortunatley, DVD-R isn't quite a reality for Australian home consumers. The DVR-AO3 isn't due for release in the antipodes until late June. It's expected to retail locally for around AU$2000.
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