Pioneer PIONEER DVD/CD RECORDABLE INT ATAPI (Pioneer-DVRA04)

Pioneer DVR-A04

PIONEER DVD/CD RECORDABLE INT ATAPI (Pioneer-DVRA04) Review, by Melissa J. Perenson July 31, 2002

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• Reviewed by: platini

  Strengths: Burns great after firmware update, very reliable.

  Weaknesses: Very loud, vibration is awful, slow burn rate, and awful software bundle.

  Overall: When I first bought this recorder, the DVD-R would melt, literally. After updating the firmware, it worked great. My biggest issue, other than the DVD meltdown, is the noise & vibration problem. When the drivfe spins, it would create this vibration that is quite annoying, and adding to it the noise from the spinning of the drive my be quite loud for most ears. I hope that the DVR-A05 would improve on that.

• Reviewed by: ploung

  Strengths: This is a great unit! Every DVD has been burnt, AND PLAYS! No Failures.

  Weaknesses: Software package was not great........

  Overall: Had a lot of frustration with various software packages which I purchased to edit, and then burn DVD's (Dazzle, Mainactor, DVDit and other Sonic products). Many problems. Then, two weeks ago I purchased "Pinnacle Studio 8", which is an editing and burning software. Now I am spitting out great DVD's with the A04, with no problems. It is as easy as burning CD's.........

• Reviewed by: MindShatter

  Strengths: Burns DVDs!!!! Does exactley what it says it does.

  Weaknesses: I would have preferred it to come with a version of Nero that allowed you to make a Video DVD with it.

  Overall: Please take these other reviews complaining about speed with a grain of salt. Also ignore the outrageous prices that are quoted for media. I have found 15 places in the last 5 minutes that have media for around a buck a piece. Speed is 1x with most media and it does take about 45 minutes to burn a DVD. 45 minutes for 4.7 GB. My 20x CD Burner can do 700 MB in about 5 mins. That means 4.7 GB (6-7 CD's) would take 35 - 40 minutes and you then have 6-7 CD's. Listen, there will be faster burners available eventually. This is the only burner I have seen consistent results with and I have use both Panasonic's and HP's. Let the people complain, this is new technology and geared towards people in the know. It burns DVDs that play on pretty much every standalone player and it is a valid alternative for data storage.

• Reviewed by: peonslicer

  Strengths: Cost It burns DVDs

  Weaknesses: Slow

  Overall: ok, its pretty simple. This drive burns dvds/cds. however, because it is so cheap, i went searching for a downfall, and here it is: the speed. It reads CD at like... 24x. I suggest buying this and then going out and buying a normal, fast cd/dvd reader, youll still come out about $150 ahead of all the people who shelled out $500 for a fast DVD writer. Oh, and if u are gunna complain about how slow it write the DVDs, take a look at how much they cost (RWs are about $5.50 and Rs are $4ish a peice) and then tell me how many you plan on buring =) (i guarantee you wont leave these turned over on your desk like you leave your CDs)

• Reviewed by: esmithiii

  Strengths: Good compatibility. Fairly easy to use. Hardware works as expected. Great price.

  Weaknesses: Software bundle stinks, the drive is slow (on par with other drives though)

  Overall: This drive has met my expectations, and I would recommend it but plan on getting some more software if you plan on doing any serious video authoring. The software bundle, specifically Sonic MyDVD and VERITAS RecordNow DX is not easy to use, and in my opinion, is not sufficient for even my simple needs. The recordnow DX software is not user friendly for creating data DVDs/CDR-RWs. It is near impossible to edit the contents of a a data disk before burning. You must pull over entire directories, and editing the contents is not drag-and-drop like Easy CD Creator is. Once you add a directory to your layout, you cannot remove particular files from within the directory nor sub-directorys; you must delete the entire directory. Also, if you want to change the location of the directory, you cannot drag and drop it in another location, you must re-type the location. Sonic's MyDVD is slow, limited and bug-ridden. Authoring a 90 minute DVD from .MPEG files takes over an hour before the DVD even starts to burn (and I have a AMD Athalon 2200 w/ 512 mb of 333mHz RAM and a SCSI ultra wide harddrive). Burning the DVD takes another 90 minutes or so. The software has ab-ended several times while I was using it and the video editing is very limited. Make sure you get MyDVD 3.5, not the 3.1. All in all a great drive for the money, and worth every penny. Now, can anyone recommend any good editing/authoring software?