DVD Capabilities P1

Reading

Next we tried various flavours of DVD disks, these included: DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD+R, DVD-RAM and a pressed DVD-ROM disk for our read tests.

DVD-R

Firstly we checked its performance with a DVD-R disk with Nero DVD Speed:

The drive's overall speed was slow compared to many DVD-ROMs and DVD writers - here it got 2.06 speed throughout the DVD-R disk (using CLV).

DVD-RW

Its read speed performance for "-RW" disks was identical to the "-R" disks. In this test it had an average speed of 2.06.

DVD-ROM

The Pioneer A04's DVD-ROM specifications state that it is a 6 speed reader and as you can see it does manage to achieve this speed.

We think the A04 would have been an extremely slow drive for reading DVDs if it weren't for this test where it redeems itself slightly. It also uses CAV for reading DVD-ROMs as opposed to CLV for DVD-R & DVD-RW disks and manages a decent average 4.77 speed.

DVD+RW

The drive can read the oppositions re-writable "DVD+RW" disks - also at x2.06 using CLV.

DVD+R

This was the most surprising test of all, the drive managed to read the write-once "+R" disks a lot faster (using CAV) than its own "-R" disks and also faster than what the Philips DVD+RW writer can. As you can see from above, it managed an average of 4.79 speed.

DVD-RAM

For completeness we checked how it behaved with a DVD-RAM disk out of its caddy (the Toshiba SDM-1612 DVD-ROM can read DVD-RAM disks like this). We didn't expect the A04 to read them and it didn't.

ERASING DVD-RW Disks

Full Erase

We timed how long it took to do a full erase of a DVD-RW disk:

A full erase took 56 mins and 40 seconds - this is much longer than the "+" standards 23 mins.

Quick Erase

Erasing DVD-RWs in quick mode only takes as little as 8 seconds.

DVD CSS RIPPING

Next we examined the speed at which the drive could rip movies with the content scrambling system (CSS).

There are legitimate uses for ripping movies to the hard disk, for example you might want to rent a DVD movie and watch it at a later date. In this case programs like CladDVD XP or DVD Decrypter will come in handy for storing it to your hard disk.

I 16:18:12 Found 1x DVD-RW!
I 16:19:59 Operation Started!
I 16:19:59 Source Device: [1:0:0] PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-104 1.20 (D:)
I 16:19:59 Destination Folder: C:\ULTIMATE_T2\VIDEO_TS
I 17:08:53 Operation Successfully Completed! - Duration: 00:48:53
I 17:08:53 Average Read Rate: 2,612 KB/s (1.9x) - Maximum Read Rate: 2,816 KB/s (2.0x)

Pioneer DVR-A03 Average Rip Speed: 2.1 x

Panasonic LF-D311 Average Rip Speed: 5.8 x

Philips DVDRW228k Average Rip Speed: 2.2 x

Pioneer DVR-A04 Average Rip Speed: 1.9 X

The is a poor result for the A04 and it is the worst DVD writer for ripping movies.

Page 5 - Last Updated: 10 August 2002