Introduction:

On this page, the author of the review has the freedom to run tests that she/he thinks will enhance the review. These tests are unlike our standard tests, which we try to keep consistent throughout the whole review team, so that our reviews are as consistent as possible. This page gives the reviewer the opportunity to show some advanced and real world tests that other review team members may not be able to run.

Real World tests:

Real world tests are designed to simulate what normal users might use their drives for in everyday use. For example, writing discs with a burning application.

Audio Extraction:

For this test we used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to test the drive’s Audio extraction performance. As we can see from the screenshot below, the drive supports accurate stream.

Below is the results produced by EAC:

Burst mode

Secure mode

The Pioneer BDR-203BK performed well in burst mode, but was much slower in secure mode.

Nero Burning Rom:

CD-R:

For our data writing tests, we simply set up a new compilation of 703MB using Nero Burning ROM software. Writing method used is DAO (Disc At Once), and the disc is set up as a non-multisession disc with “finalize disc” enabled. The screenshot below shows how long it takes to write a disc at the highest speed. (32x)

The Pioneer BDR-203BK burned our test CD-R at 32x in 4 minutes and 12 seconds.

Let’s compare with other drives in our table below. Note, the other drives in our table are DVD burners, therefore, it is perhaps not fair to directly compare them.

The Pioneer BDR-203BK was the slowest drive when writing our test CD-R. This was to be expected as the drive is primarily a Blu-ray writer.

DVD R:

In this test we will measure the time for writing to DVD R discs. We used Nero Burning Rom to burn an ISO compilation containing 4483MB of data. We used the Disc-At-Once write method.

The Pioneer BDR-203BK burned our test DVD R at 16x in 5 minutes and 51 seconds.

Let’s compare with other drives in our table below. Please note, that the Pioneer BDR-203BK is primarily a Blu-ray writer.

The Pioneer BDR-203BK was the slowest drive when writing our test DVD R media. But again we must take into consideration, that the Pioneer BDR-230BK is a Blu-ray writer, even then, it held its own against our DVD burners.

DVD DL:

In this test we will measure the time for writing to DVD R DL discs. We used Nero Burning Rom to burn an ISO DVD-Video compilation containing 8103MB of data. We used the Disc-At-Once write method.

The Pioneer BDR-203BK burned our test DVD R DL at 8x in 15 minutes and 50 seconds.

Let’s compare with other drives in our table below. Once again, we note that the Pioneer BDR-203BK is primarily a Blu-ray burner.

Even though the Pioneer BDR-203BK is a Blu-ray drive, it was about average when writing our test DVD+R DL media. Excellent speed from a Blu-ray drive.

BD-R 50GB

For this test we compiled a HD video in Nero Vision which filled the disc to near full capacity, and then burned the resulting compilation with Nero Burning ROM.

The Pioneer BDR-203BK burned our 50GB BD-R media at 8x in 32 minutes and 31 seconds.

Let’s compare with some other Blu-ray burners below.

We don’t yet have much data for comparison purposes, but we can see that the Pioneer BDR-203BK wrote our BD-R 50GB the fastest.

BD-RE 50GB

For this test we compiled a HD video in Nero Vision which filled the disc to near full capacity, and then burned the resulting compilation with Nero Burning ROM.

The Pioneer BDR-203BK burned our test disc in 87 minutes and 53 seconds.

Let’s compare with some other Blu-ray burners below.

We don’t yet have much data for comparison purposes, but we can see that the Pioneer BDR-203BK wrote our BD-RE 50GB media the fastest.

Standalone DVD-Player compatibility test:

We only have 3 standalone DVD-Players available and 1 standalone DVD-RAM DVD-R recorder to test the DVD+R DL media (Book Type: DVD-ROM) and the DVD-R DL media (Book Type: DVD-R):      

• Panasonic DVD-RV32
• Panasonic SA-HT520
• Proline DVDP350
• Panasonic DMR-E50 recorder

Compatibility results, DVD Video:

All our DVD Standalone devices played the DVD+R DL media burned by the Pioneer BDR-203BK without any problems.

Only one DVD Standalone device would play the Pioneer BDR-203BK burned DVD-R DL media without any problems.

We would like to mention, that the compatibility issue with standalone DVD Players/Recorders and the DVD-R DL media format is caused by incompatibilities with the standalone devices used in this review, and not the Pioneer BDR-203BK or media format used.

Standalone Blu-ray Player compatibility test:

We decided to check that our resulting Blu-ray discs could play on a Blu-ray player. For this test, we used a Sony PS3.

Verbatim BD-R 50GB

No problems

Verbatim BD-R 50GB

No problems

CSS Encrypted DVD-Video ripping tests:

Most modern DVD burners don’t have Video riplock and in most cases will read a pressed DVD-Video SL disc at 16x speed. However, some drives use a CSS riplock when it comes to extracting data from the disc. If you attempt to rip a pressed DVD-Video with CSS encryption to your hard drive, then the ripping speed may be locked at a much lower speed than 16x.

To test this feature, we needed a reference from a drive that we know does not employ CSS riplock. We choose the Optiarc AD-7203A as a reference drive for this purpose and ripped a SL and DL pressed DVD-Video to our hard drive using DVDFab Platinum (full disc option).

We should point out, that ripping and compressing a DL DVD-Video disc to DVD 5 format is quite CPU intensive. The more power your system has, the less likely your system power will affect the results. The PC used in this review is equipped with a fast Intel Quad Core processor and fast hard drives. We checked to make sure our review PC was not having an impact on the results.

Below we can see our reference results.

SL CSS encrypted DVD Video disc “Goldeneye” (Optiarc AD-7203A reference result)

Time taken = 6m:12s

DL CSS encrypted DVD Video disc “The Green Mile” (Optiarc AD-7203A reference result)

Time taken = 12m:43s

Now let’s test the Pioneer BDR-203BK using the same testing procedures.

SL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (Goldeneye):

The Pioneer BDR-203BK is not CSS riplocked and ripped our test DVD-Video SL disc in 6 minutes and 1 second.

DL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (The Green Mile):

The Pioneer BDR-203BKis not CSS riplocked and ripped our test DVD-Video DL disc in 11 minutes and 54 seconds.

To compare with other drives, we present the table below.

The Pioneer BDR-203BK was fast when ripping our tested DVD-Video media. In fact, the Pioneer BDR-203BK was faster than many DVD burners.

Advanced tests:

To round off this review, we will run some advanced tests on the Pioneer BDR-203BK. These tests are: “Sheep Test”, and some special disc tests.

For this test, we will use the Sheep tests made by Alexander Noé. Why is it called sheep test? That’s because the logo of the first 1 to 1 copy program called CloneCD is a sheep. When looking at supported writers, you will notice that the feature list has sheep to indicate if a feature is supported or not. In this case we are interested in the writer’s ability to backup/write weak sectors. Also called: “Correct EFM encoding of regular bit-patterns”.

• No sheep: Can’t backup any safedisc 2 versions without the help of software tricks
• 1 Sheep: Can backup safedisc 2 up to version 2.4x without software tricks
• 2 Sheep: Can backup safedisc 2, including version 2.5x
• 3 Sheep: Can write all possible weak sectors, few if any writers could do this.

One of our forum moderators Womble; has written a guide concerning the “Sheep Test” that can be found here.

In the screenshot below taken from CloneCD, we see the Pioneer BDR-203BK supports everything.

The Pioneer BDR-203BK supports DAO-RAW96 recording mode, which basically means, it can write uncorrected data and sub-channel data.

Sheep 2.90

Sheep 3

As we can see from the results, the Pioneer BDR-203BK is a two sheep burner.

Overburning CD-R:

We tested the Pioneer BDR-203BK to see if it could overburn CD-R media. The results are below.

700MB (80 minute) over-burn test:

As we can see, the Pioneer BDR-203BK failed to overburn our test CD-R media, and the resulting disc was not readable.

MINI DVD discs:

In this section we are going to test if the Pioneer BDR-203BK is capable of writing and reading mini DVD-RW discs with a capacity of 30 minutes/1.46 GB.

The Memorex media is made by CMC Magnetics.  Thanks to Memorex Europe for sending us this media.

The Pioneer BDR-203BK had no problems in writing our test mini DVD-RW disc. Now let’s check if the Pioneer BDR-203BK can also read back our test disc.

The Pioneer BDR-203BK read back our test mini DVD-RW disc without any problems.

This concludes our Pioneer BDR-203BK review. To read the conclusion, click on the link below.