Pioneer DVD burner DVR-104 Is it a piece of JUNK?

[pharries]

I have the Pioneer DVR-104 drive. Initially it was bearable only occasionally burning DVDs that would play in various DVD players.
I subsequently applied the required firmware upgrade and now NO DVD will read the discs hn I use my original PRINCO media. With memorx media they will only play back in a Poneer DVD player.
I contacted pioneer, their tech support took 3 days to ge back to me and essentially told me that they planned on doing NOTHING more about THEIR hardware problem and refused to even allow me to revert back to the original firmware.
Pioneer have lost a customer for life!
Ho about a vote is this a piece of junk or not?!!!

[subclubkid]

I have a 104, and while at first I loved it. I have grown to hate it. I burn at 1x, and that ends up taking more than an hour to burn a whole dvd. And then some times it just stops with 20 % left, and I'm stuck with 80% of the movie.

Now I know there are ways to fix things, all of wich take hours and hours to do. I've had it with my dvd burner, its good to back up my harddrive, but thats it.

I want a new 105. someone told me you can burn a dvd in around 15 minutes.......

[Bounty21]

subclubkid you are right i just got the new a05 and i burn a whole movie on a dvd-rw in 15 minutes. the dvd-rw's i use are unbranded all they have on the top are like white surface and thats it. and all the movies i burned work on all standalones. and i do just use nero video mode.

[tumbar]

the 104's "suck" allright, but I'll take it off your hands for $50. :P

[thxkid]

wow.. never seen so many problems with these -R's burners, sony, pioneer, crap I bought a HP DVD200i +R back in november have burned about 125-150 DVD+R's with only one defective media and they play in, and all DVD players I have tried and I use the cheap Ritek $2 ones, of course I have also tried Imation, memorix, maxell, HP, vertibatum and philips all those have worked flawless also, while using NERO 5.5917, DVDxCOPY to burn the DVD's. maybe its because the +R has been out a little longer so they worked out the bugs before the -R camp has. Though my DMR-E10 and E20 work perfect also with Ram and -R's.

[dwisniski]

I have not had one problem with the 104 since the day I've had it. The unit installed nice and easy, and it hasn't created one coaster yet ( except when there was an error on my part. ) Writing at 1x speed doesn't bother me, I do sympathize with those who haven't had the same fortune I've experienced with the burner. I am very satisfied with the DVR-104.

[SergeantD]

I have not had one problem with the 104 since the day I've had it. The unit installed nice and easy, and it hasn't created one coaster yet ( except when there was an error on my part. ) Writing at 1x speed doesn't bother me, I do sympathize with those who haven't had the same fortune I've experienced with the burner. I am very satisfied with the DVR-104.

what he said

[Valnar]

I love my DVR-104. Not one coaster. Plays in everything.
But I also only use good media, like Pioneer or Verbatim.

Robert

[Faustus]

My A04 is awsome, no bad burns, good compatability as long as I use good disk, and only one failure to finish a disk ever... it was very cheap/bad media though.

Been using it for over 9 months or there abouts.... couldn't ask for a better burner... except maybe the 105... heh

[tumbar]

I love my 104 also, but hey, if someone hates it enough, I figure I'll do them a favor and take the "worthless peice of junk" off their hands for $50.

One mans trash....

[simmons3d]

For me A04 + 1.31 firmware + Nero 5.5.9.17 + Ritek G03's = SMOOTH SAILING. Nothing but great dvd's all burned at 2x.

[mpb]

I have the Pioneer DVR-104 drive.
Ho about a vote is this a piece of junk or not?!!!

I'd say "not".

I don't know what sort of odd things you had your drive doing, but my Pioneer 104 burned well over a thousand DVDs perfectly - all brands from crap to crystal. Coasters? MAYBE four or five total - and chalk half of those up to me leaving a burn going overnight and forgetting that my weekly virus scan was going to start up.

I sold my 104 to a friend for $175, and bought a 105 for $250 (esbuy). Put in the newest (12/24) pioneer firmware. PERFECTION. About seventy discs burned so far. Zero coasters. Nothing burning lower than its certification level. The older Riteks that are only good for 1x even burned at 2x on occasion. I was disappointed that they didn't ALWAYS burn at 2x, but hey, the 2x had been icing on the cake to begin with.

Maybe it's hardware issues - you need a fairly fast PC to get good results from these. Maybe it's software issues - you didn't say what you were using to make burns, but I'd recommend Veritas Prassi PrimoDVD for best results with the Pioneer drives. In any event, I'm sorry to see that you had problems with your drive, and I hope you'll be able to find the solution, because once you do, that drive will serve you well.

For THXKID: -R came out first. +R/RW is fairly reliable stuff, but they do it by spoofing an identifier-bit in order to solve the inherent reflectivity problem - they make the DVD player think it's reading a back layer. This causes problems in legacy devices and could cause serious issues with future compatibility. The HP 200i is a slow drive (2.4x). When you upgrade for speed, since you already have plenty of +R/RW media and experience, I'd recommend the Sony DRU500 "+"&"-" 4x drive, or its successor. You'd want to skip the Pioneer 105, solid as it is, because it has no support for writing the "plus" media.

[Cheesemeister2000]

Definitely NOT junk !

pharries - Take a look at the firmware forum. They have a downgrade tool. Don`t use PRINCO, i`ve never heard anyone say a good thing about that media ! Use a Ritek dye based disc, they are the best.

simmons3d - I`d back you on that, i use the same combinations, NO Problems !

I always burn at 1x and never had any problems or coasters.

Cheesemeister2000

[steef]

hallo

it is absolute junk you buy a 2x burner not a 1x

steef

[birdygal]

I have the 104 and love mine the only coasters I made were on some specific media I used. Ritek never a coaster


I have the original firmware version 1.2 in mine and will not upgrade till I do have problems with the current version.

[Craig Tucker]

The only problems I have had with it is when using crap media. No problems using decent media

[IJM]

The 104 is a fine piece of hardware.

Burnt quite a few DVD-RWs, DVD-Rs and the occasional CD-R. No coasters as yet, although this is largely because I'm proofing my projects on RW before commiting them to a DVD-R. I've used Pioneer brand DVD-Rs, Datasafe Classics and Ritek G3 based Datasafes. DVD-RWs I use are Datasafes and Verbatim.

I encode DVDs with TMPGenc and Author and Burn with Ulead's DVD Workshop 1.2, all running under Win XP Pro. For data backups and VCDs I use Nero (reasonably newish version). I only ever play the discs on my own players which happen to both be Pioneer players (Just a conincidence, honest). The players are the DV-717 and the DV-454.

It's not the fastest drive in the world, but it works for me. I'm happy to go off and do something else while it's burning. I'm still using the original 1.30 firmware that it came with and it works fine. I've considered upgrading the firmware to 1.31, but for now "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

I'm sorry to see that there are some out there who have experienced problems. I can understand that the odd rogue drive (or batch thereof) can occur. But, if your experience of Pioneer's support has truly been that bad, then I'd say that that's unforgivable (of Pioneer).

In the future, I will probably eventually upgrade to a faster drive, but only when they are significantly faster (and probably a whole lot cheaper). I'd certainly buy another Pioneer drive. For now, I'm happy with my DVR-104.

Ian.

[MikeV]

Have had my 104 for about a year and have had no problems. No coasters even with cheap media. Tried a "Hot Rocket" brand DVD-R and it burned and played fine. I'll stick with my 104.

[musher70]

The a-04 is the best drive out there b4 sony releases the dru,
everyone is knocking it now? I can't understand why....Its
ripped every disc i threw at it, it burned 200 dvd's so far,got
the firmware update, does princo's that i use at 2x, burns in
less the 30 mins,hell i never get a sony anyway, cause i have
had enough of those lemons.....

[pharries]

I think I have fixed my Pioneer woes.
There is a later vfirmaware version available on the British Pioneer web site than at the US web site.
I installed the British version, DVD burned no problems!!
Anyone know why there would be a later version on the British vs USA site?

[subclubkid]

I'm not knocking the burner. It does its job. But I cannot stand the time it takes, thats why I said I want a new 105. And I wouldnt sell it for $50.

I havent tried any 2x media, wich I guess I should before I complain anymore. But someone told me that 2x media sucked?

[Feuerwehr]

I love the 104. Never had a coaster in over 200 burns using mostly cheap Princo disks. It has completely lived up to its specs. What more can I ask? Well worth the $250 I paid.

[musher70]

Who started this thread, one of them damn sony cracdkheads?

[TheInformer]

I've never had a problem with my A04 (bought under the Cendyne label). I use Maxell DVD-R discs and consistently the drive burns with no problems at 2X. Of course, I've upgraded my firmware to 1.31 RPC-1 so maybe that has something to do with it

For some info on different A04 firmware revisions, check out:
http://www.firmwares.co.uk/

[draganong]

make sure you disable DMA for this drive. It solved a lot of problems for me.

[mazinz]

my 104 burner is differnet from most in that it came built in my compaq system (used bestbuy build a pc) so any of the firmwares DO NOT work with my drive, Mine is still at 1.10. I asked pioneer about that and they mentioned that compaq itself had to make firmware for it which they have not, but knock on wood, never had a problem--

[Robbins1940]

The A04 is a good drive.

Yes, Ritek is the best media to use on this drive.

Don't use White Label Gen 4 2x speed discs, they crap.

Also don't run this drive in udma mode or you will get burn errors. Wasted 3 dvd-r discs before changing it to PIO mode. Lucky they were only £0.90 discs not £6.00 per disc.

Might get the A05 later this year when the price drops below £150.

David

[LanceSteel]

Count one more "I Love It." My 104 has not had one coaster since I got it last april. It works great (even with DMA enabled) and 1x buring is no problem to me. I just burn a disk when my computer is idle (ie I set it up to burn when I'm not home.) I'm just happy that I can burn a DVD to begin with.

[Mr N]

I had a 104 and it was a great drive burning DVd to all discs except cheap BulkPaq ones. I sold it to a m8 when the 105 came out and its even better, taking under 15 mins to burn a DVD. Every disc worked in all machines i tried - until about 2 weeks ago when i updated Nero to 5.5.10. Every disc failed in UDF/ISO mode and all others. I also updated the firmaware to 1.21 and so i was unsure about what the cause was. I backdated Nero to 5.5.9.14 and now all is well again burning 4x datasafe media in under 15 mins. I am thinking about changing to RNM 4.5 but i have had no problems with the 104 or 105 using Nero. Does anyone know where i can get 5.5.9.17 as this was the latest Nero version i had that worked correctly. Nero say they are not aware of a problem and Pioneer havent responded to me yet but i think its Nero.

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn