Pioneer 107 and quality of high speed burns.

[ronin]

Hello all!

Have just purchased a Pioneer 107 dvd drive from ESBuy for $96, no tax and free shipping!!. It will be going into a Dual 800 G4 running 10.3.4, MTR, DVD2One, and Toast 6.0.5. I have read about the new firmware flasher that works on a Mac so that the 107 will burn any disk at 8x...I will eventually try that I think since many of the posts report no problems with the flashing.

My question is the quality of high speed burns. I've been using the original 103 drive and can only burn at 1x and 2x (use almost exclusively TDK 2x discs) with great results 99% of the time. My 1x burns take about 45", my 2x burns about 26" on avg. From what I've read here 4x should complete in 15" and 8x in 7".

------- Is the quality of the faster burns as good as 1x and 2x burns? ------- Should I upgrade to "better" media (Rima has good prices on bulk 4x Tayo Yudens)

Thanks for any words of wisdom from all you "faster burners"

Ronin

[Wyatt Riot]

It takes me about 13:42 (according to Toast, actually about 15:00) to burn a full DVD at 4x. As for burning at 8x, I've only tried it twice. The first time worked flawlessly. Toast stalled at 4:16 left on the second time and I had to unplug the burner to get it to stop. (Yeah, I know. Probably not the best thing.) I used 4x Memorex DVD-Rs. You'll probably get better results with high quality media.

[TugBoat]

Well, according to these people;
http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/Tips/pioneerflash/pioneerflash.html

I have burned over 100pcs of it without a problem, it is very reliable.

Me? Well I don't need to save that extra 7 minutes. I burned at 1x for awhile. 4x is just great. I just flashed my 107 to the Official 1.15, good enough for me. Like everything else, it all depends on the media you use, and I have my flashed 105 to do the ripping, so I'm not worried about the 107 reading slower

[Macnewbie]

Well, according to these people;
http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/Tips/pioneerflash/pioneerflash.html

I have burned over 100pcs of it without a problem, it is very reliable.

Me? Well I don't need to save that extra 7 minutes. I burned at 1x for awhile. 4x is just great. I just flashed my 107 to the Official 1.15, good enough for me. Like everything else, it all depends on the media you use, and I have my flashed 105 to do the ripping, so I'm not worried about the 107 reading slower

Version 1.16 is out now. Considering 1.15 was just recently released, there must have been a bug in 1.15.

v1.16:
http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pio/pe/images/portal/cit_3424/103812921DVR107D_FW116.exe

[zinkton]

It really depends on how finicky your DVD player is.

Burning at 8X on a variety of media, the Pioneer 107 will read the data back just fine. But if I take the disc out and put it in my Mac's DVD-ROM drive, it won't read as reliably.

For playing in my ancient Pioneer DV-414 home DVD player, I can record at up to 4X using Ritek G04 media without any glitches; but if I use media such as the ProdiscS03 (also rated at 4X) I need to bring the burn speed down to 1X to get 100% reliable burns.

It's really important to watch the *entire* movie once you're done, because in my case, the glitches in the video only showed up for 5 seconds or so about 2/3 through the movie. The player just showed the mpeg blocks and then moved on. If I record at 2X usually this will never happen, but at 1X, it has never happened.

[TugBoat]

Version 1.16 is out now. Considering 1.15 was just recently released, there must have been a bug in 1.15.

Are they going for a record or what? I've never heard of this many updates in such a short time for a new burner. Of course, I never worried about it before 'cause I didn't have a way to flash the drive

OK, your link gets me an .exe file. Is there an easy way to extract the firmware file and use it with the OSX flasher? It would be nice to know an easy way. I've been using this link;
http://www.pioneeraus.com.au/computer/firmware.html
That gives me an .exe file and a folder. The folder contains the firmware file that I use with the OSX flasher. I don't have a PC, I have VPC (XP & 98se) and an OSX booting Mac.

[Macnewbie]

Version 1.16 is out now. Considering 1.15 was just recently released, there must have been a bug in 1.15.

Are they going for a record or what? I've never heard of this many updates in such a short time for a new burner. Of course, I never worried about it before 'cause I didn't have a way to flash the drive

OK, your link gets me an .exe file. Is there an easy way to extract the firmware file and use it with the OSX flasher? It would be nice to know an easy way. I've been using this link;
http://www.pioneeraus.com.au/computer/firmware.html
That gives me an .exe file and a folder. The folder contains the firmware file that I use with the OSX flasher. I don't have a PC, I have VPC (XP & 98se) and an OSX booting Mac.

The link you provided has the 1.16 firmware in a zip.

[ronin]

Thanks for everybody's replies,

My Drive came today and I will install this weekend. I think I'll do some normal 4x burns before flashing my drive to the new hacked firmware. Will go ahead and get some 4x TY from RIMA also.

Speaking of that... do I just double click on the "update file" and it runs the flash? The folder that I downloaded from MacetVideo.com contains an update file/utility and some other files. When I run the update file, do I get to chose to update to the official 1.15 firmware or the 1.13 hacked firmware?

Thanks

Ronin

[alkaline]

The 1.1.3 Hacked firmware is RPC1 (Zone free)

and the official 1.1.5 is the official Pioneer RPC2 (Zoned).

You have to choose yourself the firmware you need to use.

[maureen]

I was after the firmware which allows the good quality 4* disks to burn at 8* does anybody know where i can get it?.
Ive downloaded and installed v1.16 but it still only burns at 4*

[alkaline]

I was after the firmware which allows the good quality 4* disks to burn at 8* does anybody know where i can get it?.
Ive downloaded and installed v1.16 but it still only burns at 4*

You'll have to flash your DVR-107 with the "1.1.3 Hacked firmware" to do that.

[maureen]

Where do i get the hacked version?.

[TugBoat]

Where do i get the hacked version?.

From somewhere in France I suppose...:P