Pioneer Japan Introduces the Pioneer DVR-A06-J

[KTH]

Pioneer is releasing the DVR-A06-J in Japan in June of this year. According to the article on www.cdrinfo.com the new DVD Recorder drive will support writing in both DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW formats as well as CD-R/RW. To read the full article with hardware specs see the link below.


http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.asp?RelatedID=3743

[Baldrick]

Pioneer supports +r/w...hmm...they must have noticed that lots of people bought the new sony and other dual writers....

[Faustus]

Here is another story on it.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-1007520.html?tag=fd_top

Power of a Pioneer, features of the Sony. Sweet!

Sadly this clouds the entire "format war" issue even greater, I can see the 5000 post topics now *SIGH*

[SLICK RICK]

Does anyone know what the price will be on this drive.

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[KDH]

Hi Philip-me again!

+RW/R only writers will disappear if the HUGE market of OEM sales to HP/Compaq and Dell disappears also

If they go dual then Philips etc go dual- otherwise not! They make 50 million PC's a year between them and if only 20% are fitted with DVD+RW rewriters then thats about 25,000 a day-a fairly significant market!


As things stand, apart from a small number of RAM/-RW drives made by Panasonic(OEM to Gateway PC's) the whole DVD writer market will have +RW capability in a few months time.

The lower cost of licensing +RW only drives may mean that Dell and HP hold firm ,other PC makers and eventually DVD duplicator makers follow because they're cheaper.Media cost differences become more irrelevant each month-especially when Princo realize their lack of DVD+R manufacturing is costing them huge market share.

It's called economics!

It depends on Dell and HP.

KDH

[drewson99]

and if only 20% are fitted with DVD+RW rewriters then thats about 25,000 a day-a fairly significant market!

where did the 20% figure come from? is that fairly accurate?

[KDH]

"During February, 19.2 percent of PCs sold at retail came with DVD-recording drives, and the pace is accelerating, according to NPDTechworld. In December, the figure was 12.3 percent and in February 2002 it was 2.25 percent."
taken from
http://news.com.com/2100-1042-995341.html

With HP hoping to put them in, virtually as standard, soon, this figure will rise.

HP and Dell hold 33% of world market.Fujitsu Siemens who also have previously fitted +RW only drives, hold a further 5%.
taken from
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jhtml?containerId=pr2003_04_17_152306

I was just trying to put it across that the OEM market supplying the PC makers is huge and the liklehood of +only drives disappearing is not cut and dried. (PhilipL would like them to though!!)

KDH

[KDH]

More figures I've come across today at

http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Article1.asp?datePublish=2003/05/22&pages=04&seq=17

"Pioneer has a monthly capacity of 400,000 recordable DVD drives, which is expected to grow to 600,000 by the end of June. It could double its capacity to 1.2 million units by year-end, as it will complete its second factory in Dongguan, (Guangdong Province) China in August, said Shannon Yu, general manager of Pioneer China Holding Cooperation.

Thanks to orders from many new clients, Pioneer’s total desktop-use recordable DVD drive shipments in 2003 are expected to reach four million units, compared to 2.2 million in 2002. The new clients include several international brand PC companies and first-tier channel distributors in Europe, according to Yu.

In 2003, the global desktop-use recordable DVD drive market is expected to reach 14 million units while the slim-type recordable DVD drive market is expected to grow to three million units from 215,000 last year, Pioneer High Fidelity Taiwan quoted Tokyo Shoko Research (TSR) as saying."

So Pioneer are expecting to have about 30% of the market this year.

They're making up to 400,000 drives a month at the moment.

OK -using some figures and assumptions from my previous posts on this thread we can assume that NEC are currently fitting over 750,000 +RW only drives in Dell and HP PC's a month.

More info
"OEM orders, mainly from Apple Computer and Sony, generated about 75% of the company’s total DVD-RW drive sales, while the remainder came from OBM business"

Apple have just started fitting Sony drives to some of their laptops and Sony now use Sony(logically)!

It becomes clear why +RW capability was introduced.
Their business was going down the tubes in front of their eyes.

KDH

[Northstar]

Ok you have convinced me to keep my Ricoh +R/W drive you can stop now

Joking aside though... + writers are slowly picking up pace, but here in the UK it seems most people are buying - drives for the moment, now these +/- drives appeared which i think are now overtaking both of the single formats which can only be good news for us single format owners IMHO, as it will keep both alive maybe.

All i hope for out of this is that my drive will last me about a year until i have to upgrade to a faster drive, but it seems cheapo + media is harder to get than it is to get cheapo - media, i dont know if thats because there isnt as much + media being made or cause its being sold very quickly, when i look at certain online sites selling media in the uk its nearly all - media

As you can probably tell im pretty new to this dvd buisiness but im learning quick, all the people i know with - writers all have problems with their drives at some time producing coasters, i dont know if thats down to the media they used or down to them themselfs, id say media seeing as they have had writers a while they should know what theyre doing, but who knows, all i know with my + drive and chaep media (£27 = 25 datawrite disks) i havent had one single coaster upto yet (crossed fingers)

Anyway i personaly havent had any experience with the - drives and cant say which is the better format, i only know all the disks ive done have worked in 3 standalone players (one pretty old one) with no problems at all and thats what counts for me... compatability is everything in a dvd writer, if you dont have that then you have a useless bit of kit.

I think in Europe/UK we may be end up being all - users (i hope not) and in the USA it may end up being pretty much + only, i see it a bit like SNES being more popular in the states and Megadrive here in europe being more popular, maybe this is how it will go and we will be divided.

To be honest we can all say what we think about it, its all just speculation, but it gives us a good idea of what to go with with all these opinions floating around, i think the multi format drives have solved that problem though, but who knows, not even the people who make the drives know anymore lol.

OK ive gone on a bit so now i'll shut up

[KDH]

I'm in the UK too!
The point is there may not be many -RW only drives in a couple of months so I can't see -RW winning anything in Europe either.

Cheap UK DVD+R media guide here

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/emperordalek/

KDH