Author’s page:

Introduction:

On this page, the author of the review has the freedom to run tests that she/he thinks will enhance the review. These tests, unlike our standard tests, which we try to keep consistent throughout the whole review team, so that our reviews are as consistent as possible. This page gives the reviewer the opportunity to show some advanced and real world tests that other review team members may not be able to run.

Real World tests:

Real world tests are designed to simulate what normal users might use their drives for in everyday use. For example, writing discs with a burning application.

Nero Burning Rom:

In the following tests we will burn discs from the main media groups with Nero Burning Rom.

CD-R:

For our data writing tests, we simply set up a new compilation of 703Mb using Nero Burning ROM software. Writing method used is DAO (Disc At Once), and the disc is set up as a non-multisession disc with “finalize disc” enabled. The screenshot below shows how long it takes to write a disc at the highest speed. (40x)

The Pioneer DVR-215BK burned our test CD-R at 40x in 3 minutes and 30 seconds.

Let’s compare with other drives in our table below.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK was about average when writing our test CD-R.

DVD R:

In this test we will measure the time for writing to DVD R discs. We used Nero Burning Rom to burn an ISO compilation containing 4483Mb of data. We used the Disc-At-Once write method.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK burned our test DVD R at 20x in 5 minutes and 5 seconds.

Let’s compare with other drives in our table below.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK was one of the fastest drives when writing our test DVD R media.

DVD DL:

In this test we will measure the time for writing to DVD R DL discs. We used Nero Burning Rom to burn an ISO DVD-Video compilation containing 8103Mb of data. We used the Disc-At-Once write method.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK burned our test DVD R DL at 8x in 19 minutes.

Let’s compare with other drives in our table below.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK was the slowest drive when writing our DVD+R DL test disc, but we don’t yet have a large enough sample base to really compare.

Standalone DVD-Player compatibility test:

We only have 3 standalone DVD-Players available and 1 standalone DVD-RAM DVD-R recorder to test the DVD+R DL medias (Book Type: DVD-ROM) and the DVD-R DL media (Book Type: DVD-R):      

• Panasonic DVD-RV32
• Panasonic SA-HT520
• Proline DVDP350
• Panasonic DMR-E50 recorder

Compatibility results:

All our DVD Standalone devices played the DVD+R DL media burned by the Pioneer DVR-215BK without any problems.

Only one DVD Standalone device would play the Pioneer DVR-215BK burned DVD-R DL media without any problems.

We would like to mention, that the compatibility issue with standalone DVD Players/Recorders and the DVD-R DL media format is caused by incompatibilities with the standalone devices used in this review, and not the Pioneer DVR-215BK or media format used.

CSS Encrypted DVD-Video ripping tests:

Most modern DVD burners don’t have Video riplock and in most cases will read a pressed DVD-Video SL disc at 16x speed. However, some drives use a CSS riplock when it comes to extracting data from the disc. If you attempt to rip a pressed DVD-Video with CSS encryption to your hard drive, then the ripping speed may be locked at a much lower speed than 16x.

To test this feature, we needed a reference from a drive that we know does not employ CSS riplock. We choose the Optiarc AD-7203A as a reference drive for this purpose and ripped a SL and DL pressed DVD-Video to our hard drive using DVDFab Platinum (full disc option).

We should point out, that ripping and compressing a DL DVD-Video disc to DVD 5 format is quite CPU intensive. The more power your system has, the less likely your system power will affect the results. The PC used in this review is equipped with a fast Intel Quad Core processor and fast hard drives. We checked to make sure our review PC was not having an impact on the results.

Below we can see our reference results.

SL CSS encrypted DVD Video disc “Goldeneye” (Optiarc AD-7203A reference result)

Time taken = 6m:12s

DL CSS encrypted DVD Video disc “The Green Mile” (Optiarc AD-7203A reference result)

Time taken = 12m:43s

Now let’s test the Pioneer DVR-215BK using the same testing procedures.

SL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (Goldeneye):

The Pioneer DVR-215BK does not employ CSS riplock and the drive performed very well, completing the test in 5 minutes and 46 seconds.

DL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (The Green Mile):

The Pioneer DVR-215BK does not employ CSS riplock and the drive performed very well, completing the test in 11 minutes and 20 seconds.

To compare with other drives, we present the table below.

As we can see, we don’t have a large database of results to compare with. But the Pioneer DVR-215BK performed extremely well with this test.

Advanced tests:

To round off this review, we will run some advanced tests on the Pioneer DVR-215BK. These tests are: “Sheep Test”, and some special disc tests.

For this test, we will use the Sheep tests made by Alexander Noé. Why is it called sheep test? That’s because the logo of the first 1 to 1 copy program called CloneCD is a sheep. When looking at supported writers, you will notice that the feature list has sheep to indicate if a feature is supported or not. In this case we are interested in the writer’s ability to backup/write weak sectors. Also called: “Correct EFM encoding of regular bit-patterns”.

• No sheep: Can’t backup any safedisc 2 versions without the help of software tricks
• 1 Sheep: Can backup safedisc 2 up to version 2.4x without software tricks
• 2 Sheep: Can backup safedisc 2, including version 2.5x
• 3 Sheep: Can write all possible weak sectors, few if any writers could do this.

One of our forum moderators Womble; has written a guide concerning the “Sheep Test” that can be and be found here.

In the screenshot below taken from CloneCD, we see the Pioneer DVR-215BK supports everything.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK supports DAO-RAW96 recording mode, which basically means, it can write uncorrected data and sub-channel data.

As we can see from the results, the Pioneer DVR-215BK is a two sheep burner.

Overburning CD-R:

We tested the Pioneer DVR-215BK to see if it could overburn CD-R media. The results are below.

700MB (80 minute) over-burn test:

The Pioneer DVR-215BK reported a maximum overburn capacity of 83:49.67. We then setup a test burn with CD-Speed of slightly less than maximum and burned the disc, 83:24.00 to be exact.

As we can see, the Pioneer DVR-215BK had no problems in writing our test disc. Now let’s see if the Pioneer DVR-215BK can read back our created disc.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK had no problems in reading our test disc.

MINI DVD discs:

In this section we are going to test if the Pioneer DVR-215BK is capable of writing and reading mini DVD-RW discs with a capacity of 30 minutes/1.46 GB.

The Memorex media is made by CMC Magnetics.  Thanks to Memorex Europe for sending us this media.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK had no problems in writing our test mini DVD-RW disc. Now let’s check if the Pioneer DVR-215BK can also read back our test disc.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK read back our test mini DVD-RW disc without any problems.

Video-CD disc:

For our final test we wanted to see how the Pioneer DVR-215BK would read a Video-CD, for this test we created a Video-CD with Nero Burning ROM 8, and used NERO CD-Speed to read the disc back. Below is our result:

The Pioneer DVR-215BK had no problems in reading our test VCD.

This concludes our Pioneer DVR-215BK review. To read the conclusion, click on the link below...

DVD-RAM Writing performance

Conclusion