Although Pioneer paved the way for consumer DVD burning with DVD-R, the format was eventually eclipsed by rival format DVD+R, which managed to ramp up write speeds much faster than DVD-R. So the feisty manufacturer has thrown a curveball by adding support for DVD-RAM. Well, sort of.

The model we received for testing is the DVR-110DBK, which can read DVD-RAM discs (without the protective cartridges, unfortunately), but can’t write to them. The DVR-110, which should be available by the time you read this, will be able to read and write to DVD-RAM discs, making the additional format actually useful.

The bizarre read-only DVD-RAM support is not, to our dismay, augmented by wildly superior performance in reading and writing to the more familiar DVD-R/W and DVD+R/W formats. For example, it took 6:21 (min:sec) to write 4.25GB of data at 16x to a DVD+R disc, nearly a half-minute behind drives from BenQ and Plextor. We think the drive could have done better—it took nearly 20 seconds to “close” the disc, spinning up the disc several times during the process every time we tested it. It shouldn’t have taken more than a few seconds to do so.

Writing to DVD-R took even longer at 6:33, which is humiliating when you consider that it’s Pioneer’s own format. While the drive is rated for 8x double-layer burning in both formats, it couldn’t “overspeed” our 4x Verbatim media, and managed just a ho-hum 18:02 writing 7.5GB of data to 8x media. Although Pioneer will no doubt shine up the firmware to support a wider range of media, there’s simply not much else about the DVR-110 to boast about to your friends, family, or pets.
--Logan Decker

Month Reviewed: December 2005

+ BABIES: Competent drive with DVD-RAM read support and much improved software.

- RABIES: Behind-the-curve speeds, and it's rather noisy burning to DVD at high speeds.

Verdict: 6

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