First Look: Pioneer DVR-A07

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19 November 2003 12:00 PM
Tags: dvd, pioneer
First Take: Pioneer DVR-A07 Pioneer's soon-to-be-released multiformat DVD writer, the DVR-A07, is an internal drive that marries power with versatility.

Not only does the drive supports the four major recordable DVD formats (DVD-R and DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW), it even comes with a glut of coaster-prevention features designed to enhance and speed-up your DVD burning experience. More importantly, the DVR-A07 is bestowed with a feature currently unsupported by the competition: 8x DVD-R/+R and 4x DVD-RW/+RW burn capability.

New high-speed burners, including those from Sony, Plextor and HP, already support DVD+R burns at 8x. But Pioneer is currently the only manufacturer that has announced an 8x DVD-R and 4x DVD-RW-compliant burner.

An 8x speed is a significant boost in terms of DVD mastering performance. This means that, theoretically, you can pump up to 10MBps of data to the DVR-A07, outstripping the 3MBps rate of older 2x burners by a huge leap. At 8x, it takes less than 10 minutes to master an entire 4.7GB DVD disc--compared to the 15 minutes that the current crop of 4x writers are capable of.

On top of that, the drive writes CD-R (40x), CD-RW (24x), and 4x DVD+RW, and offers a handful of unique features as well: Pioneer's Defect Management System claims to enhance writing reliability and the DVR-A07 sports a Dynamic Resonance Absorber which reduces playback-disruptive vibrations caused by impaired or low quality media. Pioneer has also incorporated what the company calls "Precision Recording Technology", a smart feature designed to improve image quality in DVD discs by automatically adjusting recording conditions to suit different media.

There are tradeoffs for the extra features and performance, however: To achieve full 8x speed, Pioneer recommends that you have at least an 800MHz processor and a relatively speedy hard drive with ample disk space.

If Pioneer follows its track record with the DVR-A06, we can expect to see a healthy range of DVD authoring and editing applications bundled in with the DVD-A07 0-- or at least with the officially imported version, in any case. At this stage, however, local pricing and release dates are not yet available, so the A07 may have to overcome some healthy price competition by the time it finally does become available.

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Talkback 3 comments

    Well I see you failed to menti ...Anonymous -- 10/02/04

    Well I see you failed to mention it only burns at 8x with 1 media Verbatim not very good in my view and I have just bought one they did the same with all there dvd-rw drives produced them with a s*** firmware now we have to wait not very pleased about it oh I have a plexy as well and that will burn some 4x disks at 8x and all 8x disks at 8X

    According to Pioneer's Product ...Anonymous -- 14/02/04

    According to Pioneer's Product Brochure for the A07 drive, the CD-R writing speed is only 24X, same as for CD-RW (not 40X).

    Just bought the Pioneer DVR-AO ...Anonymous -- 12/04/04

    Just bought the Pioneer DVR-AO7 8x. And 10 pack of Princo 4x DVDs. Have tried to burn a backup of data 3 times (at 4x speed), and all 3 times the data comes up corrupt. some files work most do not. very frustrating. I'll give it a go at 2x if that fails I will take it back and see if they have another one. My hard drives are fast enough, I have put it as only drive on the IDE and using XP so DMA is default, and Using Nero 6.
    Bloody Frustrating.

    Any Ideas, email me.
    Pash.

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