Introduction

When we first heard the announcement that the Pioneer DVR-108 was on sale, but only at a few retail merchants, we jumped. The DVDR scene has been fairly quiet since the introduction of the last round on Sanyo based burners (MSI DR12A, Sony DRU-540A, Plextor PX-712A) and thus, we had been waiting for something really to sink our teeth into. Fortunately, we were able to get our hands on one of the first Pioneer drives to hit the shelves, and we have been working diligently to benchmark that drive, while at the same time, re-benchmarking some of our older drives with new media.

16X, dual layer drives sound incredibly attractive, but since dual layer media still costs several dollars a disc and 16X media exists only in the fantasies of a few hardware manufacturers, we are going to have to approach our testing of the DVR-108D as a 12X review. We have included some DVD DL media for completeness as well. Oh, and the most exciting thing about this drive? It retails for nearly the same price as the DVR-107D, well under $100.

Construction

We had an OEM drive in our hands, and the bezel was a plain beige color with nothing fancy to look at. However, the retail models of the Pioneer DVR-108, which are code-named DVR-A08XL, do come with either a black or beige bezel and have specialized round, silver eject buttons.

Click to enlarge.

The DVR-108 utilizes the NEC brand chipset.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

It will be interesting to see what the NEC 3500A has to offer compared to this Pioneer drive.

Features

Below, you can see the Infotool readout from Nero. Nero incorrectly reports the drive as only an 8X read, 4X write drive. For a little more detail, we will have to rely on DVD Info Pro. You may notice that we are still using the version 1.04 firmware; you can download the 1.06 firmware from the Pioneer Japan or Pioneer Australia websites, but since we bought the drive in the US, it only makes sense to wait for a retail US firmware update.

Click to enlarge.

There are no stellar features on this drive. We do not have any HD-Burn capability, and Mount Rainier DVD+RW is obviously not supported either. However, DVD+R Dual Layer (DVD+R9) is fully supported, and we are excited to see such an inexpensive drive support such features.

Pioneer DVR-108D 16x DVD-/+RW Drive
Interface	PATA
CD Write Speed	32X, 24X ZCLV 16X, 8X, 4X CLV
CD Rewrite Speed	24X ZCLV 16X, 10X, 4X CLV
CD Read Speed	40X MAX CAV
DVD-R Write Speed	16X, 12X, 8X CLV 4X, 2X, 1X
DVD-RW Rewrite Speed	4X, 2X, 1X CLV
DVD+R Write Speed	16X, 12X, 8X ZCLV 4X, 2.4X
DVD+RW Rewrite Speed	4X, 2.4X CLV
DVD-RAM Read Speed	2X CLV
DVD Read Speed	16X MAX CAV
Supported Modes	DAO / DAO-RAW 16 & 96 TAO SAO / RAW SAO, RAW SAO 16 & 96 Packet Write Multi-Session
Supported Formats	DVD+R (DAO, incremental, seq) DVD+RW (random) DVD-R (DAO, incremental, seq) DVD-RW (restricted overwrite) CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-DA, Mixed Mode, CD Extra Photo CD, CD Text, Bootable CD, UDF
Access Time	CD: 130ms DVD: 140ms
Buffer	2MB

From the chipset information, this is by far the most ambitious drive that we have seen to date. We see identical features surface on a few other drives, including the NEC 3500A and the ASUS DRW-1604P, but we will get more into detail about those drives later.

The DVR-108D has the capabilities to write to DVD+R DL media at up to 4x and read it back at up to 8x speeds.

Burn Tests CDR Media

We use the following configuration to test our burners:

Albatron 865PE Pro II
Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz 800FSB
2 x 512 DDR OCZ PC3200 EL
Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM 8MB PATA
Windows XP SP1

We are going to run this benchmark in the same manner in which we ran our Sony DRU-540A benchmarks. We first burn the media with the DVR-108D and then use Plextools v2.12 to test C1/C2/CU averages in a Plextor PX-712A. Good burns have low C1/C2 averages and are considered to be the most readable. We used Ahead Nero's CD-DVD Speed 3.12 for burn and read tests. We will also provide images of the PX-712A for reference (which we have retested with better firmware and media). The images below are Pioneer DVR-108D images and in some cases, hover over the image to see the PX-712A images.

Fujifilm CDR

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

Neither drive has any particular trouble writing to this disc. Below, we took the disc that we just created and read it back in PlexTools and CDSpeed.

Click to enlarge.

Although there are significant C1 errors, there are no C2 or unreadable sectors, and this burn is considered just perfect.

Imation CDR

Click to enlarge
Hold your mouse over for the PX-712A image.

Like Fujifilm, Imation media is one of the higher quality brands of media, which performed just as well - at least on the burn.

Click to enlarge.

Unfortunately, this burn did not go as well as some of the others. The disc is readable, but we probably will run into trouble if the quality gets much worse. On the Plextor, the burn failed a little after the 70min marker.

Burn Tests CDR Media (cont'd)

Memorex CDR

Hold your mouse over for the PX-712A image.

We see the most C1 and C2 errors in this analysis, particularly near the end. Note that both the Pioneer and the Plextor drives have difficulty reading back the discs that they burned near the end; the flaw seems to be in the media and not the drive.

Burn Tests DVD+R Media

We have a number of different brands of DVD+R media ranging in quality.

CMC MAG F01

This is an Imation disc rated at 4x write speeds.

Hold your mouse over for the PX-712A image.

Reading the Pioneer burned disc in the Plextor shows that there was a slight glitch at the end of the write, but nothing too serious. The Plextor, on the other hand, had some trouble at the end of the burn.

Burn Tests DVD+R Media (cont.)

Ritek R03

Here's another 8x disc - this one by Ritek.

Hold your mouse over for the PX-712A image.

Even though our DVR-108D had trouble reading the disc back in the same drive, everything seems copasetic in the PX-712A.

Burn Tests DVD-R Media

CMC MAG AF1

Hold your mouse over for the PX-712A image.

There was a noticeable increase in C1 errors after the 2GB mark as Plextools read this media, but still not enough to interfere with successfully reading the content.

Burn Tests DVD RAM/DL Media

MKM DVDR+9

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

Surprisingly, the Pioneer wrote to the MKM +R9 media at a constant 4x at each layer, even though it was rated at 2.4x.

Click to enlarge.

The read back on the Plextor drive shows a perfect burn at both layers.

Ritek DVD+R9

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

The Pioneer drive seemed to perform fine on the Ritek brand +R9 media, but when trying to read it back, it ran into a problem with the second layer. We retried reading the disc twice to no avail.

Even the Plextor could not read the second layer.

Burn Tests DVD+/-RW Media

At test time, we had only Ritek media to benchmark RW capabilities on the DVR-108D. Take a look at how it performed on these media.

Ritek 004 - DVD+RW

Hold your mouse over for the PX-712A image.

Read Tests - Printed Media

Lower seek times are better.

Seek Times - Pressed CD 74:40.02
Drive	Random	Full
AOpen DDW8800	122ms	188ms
ASUS DRW-0802P	127ms	296ms
Gigabyte GO-W0808A	116ms	232ms
LG GSA-4120B	125ms	242ms
MSI DR12-A	84ms	153ms
Nu Tech DDW-082	113ms	160ms
Pioneer DVR-108D	130ms	355ms
Plextor PX-712A	112ms	165ms
Sony DRU-530A	86ms	155ms
Sony DRU-700A	119ms	245ms
Toshiba SD-R5272	110ms	169ms

Seek Times - DVD 4.38GB
Drive	Random	Full
AOpen DDW8800	114ms	272ms
ASUS DRW-0802P	130ms	312ms
Gigabyte GO-W0808A	102ms	194ms
LG GSA-4120B	94ms	195ms
MSI DR12-A	106ms	224ms
Nu Tech DDW-082	99ms	171ms
Pioneer DVR-108D	136ms	345ms
Plextor 712A	107ms	259ms
Sony DRU-530A	129ms	204ms
Sony DRU-700A	121ms	231ms
Toshiba SD-R5272	97ms	180ms

Read - Pressed CD
Drive	Average Read	Length
AOpen DDW8800	31.35X	19:57.7
ASUS DRW-0802P	30.89X	19:57.7
Gigabyte GO-W0808A	30.12X	19:57.7
LG GSA-4120B	32.50X	19:57.7
MSI DR12-A	31.81X	19:57.7
Nu Tech DDW-082	33.22X	19:57.7
Pioneer DVR-108D	31.74X	19:57.7
Plextor 712A	33.25X	19:57.7
Sony DRU-530A	31.80X	19:57.7
Sony DRU-700A	31.06X	19:57.7
Toshiba SD-R5272	31.22X	19:57.7

Read - DVDR
Drive	Average Read	Length
AOpen DDW8800	3.75X	4.38GB
ASUS DRW-0802P	6.27X	4.38GB
Gigabyte GO-W0808A	6.16X	4.38GB
LG GSA-4120B	7.58X	4.38GB
MSI DR12-A	8.22X	4.38GB
Pioneer DVR-108D	9.38X	4.38GB
Nu Tech DDW-082	6.53X	4.38GB
Plextor 712A	6.21X	4.38GB
Sony DRU-530A	5.79X	4.38GB
Sony DRU-700A	6.20X	4.38GB
Toshiba SD-R5272	6.61X	4.38GB

Read - Pressed DVD Video
Drive	Average Read	Length
AOpen DDW8800	3.44X	7.88GB
ASUS DRW-0802P	6.34X	7.88GB
Gigabyte GO-W0808A	6.31X	7.88GB
LG GSA-4120B	6.88X	7.88GB
MSI DR12-A	6.84X	7.88GB
Nu Tech DDW-082	4.30X	7.88GB
Pioneer DVR-108D	5.40X	7.88GB
Plextor 712A	6.18X	7.88GB
Sony DRU-530A	6.45X	7.88GB
Sony DRU-700A	5.88X	7.88GB
Toshiba SD-R5272	6.44X	7.88GB

Final Thoughts

Without a doubt, this is the best DVD Recorder that we have tested to date. We are looking forward to catching a glimpse of some of the BenQ and NEC solutions in the upcoming weeks, but until we can obtain samples, we have to claim the Pioneer DVR-108D as our recommendation for best DVD recorder. The nearly identical NEC 3500A specifications excite us, and we are anticipating looking at the drive later this month. Particularly, the drive may have promise for those interested in bit setting capabilities (which are not supported in the DVR-108D).

When compared to our reigning DVD recording champ - the Plextor PX-712A - the choice becomes even simpler. While we have enjoyed many months of Plextor's service as a standard against which to measure our other drives, the DVR-108D outperforms the PX-712A in every test that we have. Considering the additional features like dual layer and DVD-RAM, we really find it difficult to find a fault with the drive. And just to make everything all the sweeter, the Pioneer drive retails well under $100 on our RealTime Price Engine.

We look forward to testing our Pioneer DVR-108D with more 16X media as it becomes available, but until then, the drive can remain our number one 12X DVD burner - even if it is marketed as a 16X unit.