This drive is one of few drives that also supports the DVD-RAM format, lets us look at the recording side of the disc, and as you can see it has differences from the other DVD+R/W/R9 DL and DVD-R/W discs.

We can see a very fascinating pattern of darker spots. These tick marks are "address information" ("Pre-mastered Pit Header Field") which are embedded onto the disc. This is header information in front of data sector area, and is the same format as HDD and MO.

A DVD-RAM’s disc can be formatted in the following formats:

FAT32
UDF 1.02
UDF 1.50
UDF 2.00
UDF 2.01
UDF 2.50

By formatting a DVD-RAM disc with FAT32 it will act like a removable hard drive and all writing will be done as “background processes”. Meaning you do not have to wait for it to finish, you can start or work with other applications while the DVD-RAM is working without noticing any “hangs” or CPU slowdowns.

DVD-RAM has error correction, but also has error replacement to spare sectors as a "defect management" function. This gives higher reliability than other DVD format.

Another advantage with DVD-RAM is that the discs can be formatted/erased/written at over 100.000 times before it will/can cause/report any errors. Let’s try to read back the 2 discs that we wrote:

Lets us take a look at the media we are going to use in these tests.

Maxell 12x rated DVD-RAM media

As we can see, the Pioneer DVR-112 wrote our 12x DVD-RAM media at its maximum rated speed of 12x in 5 minutes and 33 seconds.

Now let’s see if the Pioneer DVR-112 can read our test disc.

The Pioneer DVR-112 had no problems in reading our test disc at 12x.

Maxell 5x rated DVD-RAM media

As we can see, the Pioneer DVR-112 wrote our 5x DVD-RAM media at its maximum rated speed of 5x in 11 minutes and 6 seconds.

Now let’s see if the Pioneer DVR-112 can read our test disc.

The Pioneer DVR-112 had no problems in reading our test disc at 5x.

Summary:

The Pioneer DVR-112 proved reliable at both reading and writing our test DVD-RAM media. When using 12x media the drive completed a full disc in 5 minutes and 41 seconds, which should be fast enough for every day backups.

To round of this review, we will run some advanced tests on the Pioneer DVR-112 on the next page….

26 Comments

guest: Posts: 15284; Posted on: 27 Mar 07 08:02

crap review where are the advance tests to test error correction and audio protections

Dee: Posts: 11995; Posted on: 27 Mar 07 14:35

@Sean Protected audio CD's are not available in my location. Maybe you can send me some to test :*

Hypnosis4U2NV: Posts: 1465; Posted on: 31 Mar 07 01:56

Its a good review, thanks for posting its chipset..

Wischmop: Posts: 404; Posted on: 01 Apr 07 20:20

I like that writer and review

guest: Posts: 15284; Posted on: 07 Apr 07 14:49

I am confused as to why this drive got editors choice and the DRW-1612BL didn't as it is the only sheep 3 burner I have ever seen. What makes this burner better then the DRW-1612BL?

Dee: Posts: 11995; Posted on: 09 Apr 07 12:43

^ Writing quality on all media groups won it the award.

guest: Posts: 15284; Posted on: 10 Apr 07 17:15

"As we can see from the screenshot below, the drive supports accurate stream and C2 error info and doesn’t support caching." Doesn't screenshot show contrary(C2 - no, cache - yes)? Or it is wrong screenshot?

Dee: Posts: 11995; Posted on: 10 Apr 07 18:38

^ Correct screenshot but wrong information. I corrected it now, thanks for reporting it. :X

ptch: Posts: 7; Posted on: 12 Apr 07 18:57

This message was edited at: 12-04-2007 20:20

ptch: Posts: 7; Posted on: 12 Apr 07 20:18

This message was edited at: 12-04-2007 20:20

ptch: Posts: 7; Posted on: 12 Apr 07 20:21

I've bought this burner because of the "editors choice" and because it "can be used along with Nero CD-Speed for Disc Quality Scanning”. To my surprise Disc Quality Scanning is completely irrealistic (e.g. PIE is about 10 times higher that with Lite-ON). Googling showed that it's a known problem of all Pioneer burners. For example, see that link http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/t319198.html Please update the review, because it's misleading.

Dee: Posts: 11995; Posted on: 15 Apr 07 11:28

Other makes of drives report PI/PIF errors differently than Lite-On and Plextor drives, NEC and BenQ for example. The fact is they do support PI/PIF scanning just like the Pioneer drives do and that is all that is claimed in the review.

ptch: Posts: 7; Posted on: 17 Apr 07 14:45

Pioneers do report the errors, but PIE level is far beyond the 280 set by DVD+/-R specifivation. Consequently that reporting has a very limited utility.

In addition huge spikes (up to PIE > 17 000) are often present on the graphs. Your answer reminds me an old story with hotel reservation in India. If you just reserve a room with aircond there is a great chance that it will not working. In fact you must always precise "with working aircond" while booking.

I refolmulate me request. Could you please precise in the review that although the error reporting is indeed working, but the PIE level always exeeds the DVD+/-R specs. That is not the case with Lite-on, BENQ, NEC and Plextor.

Dee: Posts: 11995; Posted on: 17 Apr 07 14:58

"but the PIE level always exeeds the DVD+/-R specs. That is not the case with Lite-on, BENQ, NEC and Plextor." This is not the case, BenQ and NEC drives often report out of spec scans on perfectly good burns. The Pioneer scan in the review is within specifcation. :*

ptch: Posts: 7; Posted on: 17 Apr 07 15:42

OK, the aircond is blowing the air. And we don't care that the air is hot

guest: Posts: 15284; Posted on: 27 Apr 07 14:48

has anyone used this burner with the wytron 688 ? i am 5 of them with a wytron 688 andhave been burning successfully at 8x, just wondering if anyone is burning at a faster rate with success.

guest: Posts: 15284; Posted on: 05 May 07 23:01

CRAP! Pioneer SUCK!, i have just returned my 5th drive for replacement, dont buy this shit, pioneer drives are cheap for a reason, they suck!. I guarantee if you buy this, you will have lazer failiure in months, you have been warned. :r

r_saotome: Posts: 484; Posted on: 06 May 07 06:14

Bought BestBuy's version of the DVR-112D, died inside of a week. A week later bought 2 Pioneer DVR-112D's from NewEgg, both of them are still working perfectly since March 2007, nothing but smooth sailing. Also, overall the best DVD burner I've owned, next to the BenQ 1640...^_^

guest: Posts: 15284; Posted on: 09 May 07 05:32

return my 112D. It will just stop writing on Verbatim/Sony/Philips and hang the whole computer.

dvddvd: Posts: 1; Posted on: 20 May 07 23:19

This test is very funny because it's so misleading. It totally ignores the lack of write quality as revealed in the well-known German computer magazine "c't" issue 2007/11 p. 122 which affects not only the Pioneer DVR-112 but a couple of new competitors drives as well. Compared to an old test where they tested the DVR-111 (which I own) the write quality of the DVR-111 exceeded the write quality of the DVR-112 except for CD-R where the DVR-112 was better. If these problems are not firmware based I would rather buy a DVR-111 again than a DVR-112. c't assumes that the enourmous price pressure may have caused the degraded write quality with those new drives (not only Pioneer!) in their test.

guest: Posts: 15284; Posted on: 12 Jul 07 13:54

I bought 3 of these. All are now in the bin. 2 would still burn DVD's but won't read or write CD's!!! I'm looking for some 110's or even 111's to replace them with. Might try lite-on's instead next batch. Nightmare for me as a supplier. Cost me heaps ... just replacing discs alone.

guest: Posts: 15284; Posted on: 16 Jul 07 11:43

Took 46 minutes to read 26% of a test-recorded dvd-ram of just 1minute 48 seconds recording time. No problem with any other type of disc. Awaiting advice from Pioneer. Had 111D before this burner, excellent performer but couldn't write to dvd-ram.

guest: Posts: 15284; Posted on: 08 Sep 07 19:06

My Plextor PX-760A failed again, my first PX-760A lived only 12 months, then I purchased a PX760A - lived for 5 months. The returned unit wrote disks at very bad quality and was replaced 2 weeks after. 6 months after that, on 2007-September 4th I just sent that 3rd PX-760A for warranty services. It did about 15 Excellent quality recordings on DVD+R16 Plextor media (I haven't used it more), but now it stopped writing on DVD+/-RW. That's total of 4 recorders send for warranty services, I'm waiting to receive the 5th. I have 9 more months remaining for warranty services, I bet it won't make it

By the way I'm going to buy another brand recorder for fail safe. Plextor - King of the quality? Well yes, but as well king of short life and failures! My opinion: never again! I wonder what should I buy for second (backup-reserve) recorder? I was just thinking about Pioneer, while reading this review, when I read in the previous comments that they live short too. What a shame on Pioneer!

guest: Posts: 15284; Posted on: 19 Sep 07 02:21

Stays in PIO mode, can't seem to force it into DMA. Thus, record speed maxes at 1X for DVD+RW. Bleah!

guest: Posts: 15284; Posted on: 15 Jan 08 00:49

Replaced my first one for a second and this second one seems to have problems with audio extraction, some glitches which a generic DVD-reader doesn't produce...

guest: Posts: 15284; Posted on: 01 May 08 04:44

I added two of these drives when I built a new system in January. I finally got me some ultra high speed CR-RWs (24X rewrite speed)from Memorix as I tend to create a lot of CDs that I rewrite often. Looks like this drive has issues re-writing to this brand of CD-RWs at anything over 12x. I've had mulitple verification failures at speeds of 16x or higher. Testing using the latest CDSpeed Nero utility now called DiskSpeed not DriveSpeed. AFAIK I have the latest firmware...124. Gonna replace both of these with some newer DVR-115's

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Pioneer DVR-112 DVD Burner Review

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DVD-RAM Read and write performance

DVD-RAM writing performance:

Summary:

26 Comments

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