Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

My DVR-104 experience

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • My DVR-104 experience

    Well I was going to wait until November or so, but I was ordering some CD's earlier in the week and the supplier was doing the DVR-104 for 199 UKP incl VAT, so I couldn't resist...

    I am currently using Datasafe DVD-R 1x media which cost me just 87 pence each. I have read so much about incompatabilies, broken FF/RW, chapters etc so I decided before I started to create my own disc, in order to "prove the point" I've copied a couple of my pre-recorded single layer (DVD5) DVD's. On both my Pioneer DV-525 and my Dansai DVD-852 the discs play flawlessly - and yes I have watched the whole disc - not a single glitch :-)) FF/RW, chapters everything works perfect, so I know from now on any problems I have are not media or player related - they will be authoring software.

    I also have a couple or DVD-RW's - branded Datasafe and Princo. I've noticed that the DVD-RW's feel quite thick compared with a DVD-R or CDR, anyway.... The Princo plays fine in both my players and the Datasafe plays fine in the Pioneer, but this disc does feel even thicker than the Princo and the tray on the Dansai is quite shallow, causing the disc to "scrub" a little - subsequently it won't play, but who cares...

    Okay, so onto my own efforts...

    I downloaded the latest DVDIt SE from Matrox's site (all 220mb) and what a waste of time that is! Yes, okay it accepts Matrox IBP elementary streams, but FF/RW is severly broken (can't go past 2x) and the playing time is not displaying on my Pioneer. Also "searching by time" fails to work on either of my standalones. Also I think the menu's are crappy quality, so I won't be upgrading this...

    I download the current v1.0 DVDWS trial (1.2 isn't up yet) and I wasn't too impressed. As v1.0 won't accept elementary streams I use the Matrox file converter to convert my IBP AVI+WAV to a MPEG2 program stream. However DVDWS always wanted to re-encode my file no matter what options I set - argh! So I thought I'd convert the source Matrox DV file to a VFW DV file and let DVDWS encode the MPEG2 stream. This worked fine except for when I played it back on both my players the field order was wrong! I can see no way to select the field order for encoding in DVDWS??? There's no way I'm spending out on this program at the moment and from what I've read on the Matrox RT2000 support forum, Matrox have jumped the gun in the recent newsletter regarding the RT2000's support by DVDWS 1.2.

    So what now... I tried DVD Movie Factory and this worked a treat :-)) It accepted my Matrox rendered program stream and when played on both my players FF/RW works all the way up to top speed (16x I think on the Dansai) and the time was displayed and "time search" worked okay too. It's a shame that the writing plug-in doesn't seem to support DVD-RW, but I just created a structure on my HD and wrote it with Nero.

    Also if anyone is interested I have DMA enabled on the DVR-104 and have had no problems with any software.

    Sorry for any typo's, but I'm hot and tired (rapidly approaching 1:45am here in UK). I'm just waiting for another DVD-R to finish burning and then I'm off to bed...

    Rob.

  • #2
    DMA on Pioneer 104

    Hi Rob,

    I can use DMA for the 104 DVD writer only if I connect it to the Highpoint RAID IDE controller of my Abit motherboard. When connected to the VIA chipset IDE controller I have to disable DMA under XP. Otherwise my DVD wrting sessions always end after a few minutes with a write error.

    What is your setup (hardware, OS and software)?

    Fred

    Comment


    • #3
      I've written several more DVD-R(W)'s today and all with DMA on and no problems what so ever. My system is....

      ECS K7S5A with on board sound (disabled) and LAN
      XP1700 CPU
      512mb Crucial PC2100 (2 x 256mb)
      Win2K with SP2
      Using IDE drivers found on mobo CD for P4S5A
      IDE1 M: Lite-on 40x CDRW (DMA on)
      IDE1 S: Pioneer DVR-104 (DMA on)
      IDE2 M: Lite-on 16x DVD-ROM (DMA on)
      IDE2 S: Removable caddy for extra storage (DMA on)
      Fast Track 100
      FT100 IDE1 M: IBM 60GXP 40GB - OS/Boot
      FT100 IDE1 S: IBM 60GXP 40GB - Extra storage (disc images etc)
      FT100 IDE2 M: Maxtor 60GB (RAID 0)
      FT100 IDE2 S: Maxtor 60GB (RAID 0)
      Santa Cruz / Sonic Fury
      RT2000 and G400 Flex
      Millenium II PCI (secondary monitor)

      Don't think I've forgotten anything...


      Rob.

      Comment

      Working...
      X