detail information

Positive:

• Supports 8x DVD-R and DVD+R speeds
• Supports 4x DVD-RW and DVD+RW speeds
• Supports 24x CD-RW speed.
• Good CD-R writing quality with most disc types.
• Good DVDR writing quality with most types of quality DVDR media.
• Reads CDs at 40x and DVDs at 12x.
• Very good DVD packet writing performance.
• Supports DAO-RAW writing.
• Supports reading and writing of full SubChannel Data.
• Supports reading and writing special sized CD-R discs.
• Fast and perfect audio extracting.
• Supports reading and writing 99 minutes discs.
• Good drive build quality.

Negative:

• Compatibility and writing quality with some DVDR/RW media could be improved (especially with known brands like Ricoh DVD+R and Verbatim DVD+RW).
• No 4x DVDR discs are supported at 8x write speed.
• Few 8x DVDR discs are supported at 8x write speed.
• Serious problems writing 24x Ultra Speed CD-RW discs.
• Slow CD-R writing speed of only 24x.
• Does not support Mt. Rainier.
• Many problems with reading less than perfect discs.
• Higher seek times than the competition
• Problems with recognizing/reading most DVD-RAM discs.
• Read speed of DVD-Video discs is locked to 5x CAV.
• Uses long time on calibrating before starting to write DVDR discs, this makes it the slowest drive at 4x DVDR speed and slower than expected at 8x DVDR writing speed
• Does not support reading all types of protected audio discs.
• Does not support 'Correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns" making it unable to backup newer Safedisc protected discs.
• Slightly noisier than some other 8x DVD-Writers.

Conclusion:

This is probably the review that has been most work ever, as we have been in contact with Pioneer several times concerning problems. We have also been waiting for new firmware versions to arrive and re-done many tests with new firmware versions.

The fact that earlier Pioneer drives have been very good and problem free made our expectations for this drive very high. It's also probably one of the most awaited drives the last few months. And finally here it is.

But did it meet our expectations? We are afraid we have to answer no to that, but you should decide that after reading this review and this conclusion.

The main positive points: The drive supports 8x DVD-Writing for both DVD-R and DVD+R and it support 4x DVD-ReWriting for both DVD-RW and DVD+RW. And it's pretty fast, a full DVD-Disc is written at around 8 minutes and 30 seconds at 8x speed. And the writing quality is very good for most types of discs. The build quality of the drive also feels good. It also supports reading and writing of 99 minutes discs.

The main negative points: We think that many will find it annoying that no 4x DVDR discs works at 8x writing speed and that few 8x DVDR discs works at 8x. We did also expect the media compatibility to be almost perfect since it's almost perfect with the older DVR-106 drive, but there were quite a few discs that the drive was unable to detect. Another serious issue is the CD-RW writing problems; Many drives have problems reading the discs written by the Pioneer DVR-107D and the CD-RW discs becomes unusable after few times of use. And it has problems reading less than perfect discs, especially pressed DVD discs seems to be a problem, another reading issue is that reading DVD-RAM discs does not work in most cases. And it has very weak backup capabilities for both Games and music discs.

The drive is priced at $ 122 USD (Price from Pricewatch per 2.03.2004 ) which makes it quite competitive to similarly featured drives.

To sum it all up, this is the best we could say: 'A fast DVD-Writer that needs a lot of firmware improvements". And we do not feel that this drive deserves any awards, due to the problems it has.

You may discuss/comment this review below or in this forum thread.