More Pioneer and Plextor madness: A newbie buys both.

[bryceguy]

Okay, I'm a total beginner and I've never burned a DVD in my life.

I searched and read all the stuff in the forum relevant to Pioneer and Plextor, and spent a bunch of time Googling reviews of those two drives. Seems most folk here prefer Pioneer so I picked up a Pioneer 109.

I know I have to wait for the firmware patch for Mac to come out (I don't know any PeeCee users) before I can take full advantage of the features of this drive.

So I install the thing and make do with the pathetic rip-speed as I rip Terminator 1 with MTR. I play the VIDEO_TS folder with VLC and I get garbled/pixelated frames every few minutes. I played it with MPlayer and I get the exact same garbled frames, and they are garbled the same way. What the heck? And that was a 2x rip with the latest and greatest drive! The DVD itself played just fine in my stand-alone Panasonic player for the TV, and it played fine in the Pioneer 109 when viewed with VLC, but when I view the rip that's on my HD, it's got crappy frames. Okay, I'm pissed. Firmware patch or not, the drive shouldn't be doing that. If it can't even rip a DVD at 2X without messing up frames, I can only imagine the coasters I'll make with 8X burns when the firmware patch finally comes out. No thanks, I don’t want the headache.

So, I return it and buy a Plextor 716A.

First thing I do is upgrade the firmware using the latest update from Plextor.com. When I use MTR to rip "Terminator 1", it STILL RIPPED AT 2X !!! Now I was royally pissed, so I decided to RTFM. It turns out I have to hold the friggin eject button for 3 seconds to enable Fast Mode because CSS encrypted DVDs are usually watched and not ripped, and you don't need a whole lot of speed to watch a DVD. So I hold the eject button and get a 7x-8x rip speed. Okay I can live with that, but then I find out that I have to do this every time I insert a DVD! What a pain. Isn't there some patch I can use so it rips at 8x without having to jump through this button-holiding hoop each time?

In the end, the Plextor 716A ripped the DVD at about 7x and after playing the files with VLC, they were flawless. Not a single distorted pixel. Hooray! I love Plextor now. Plextor's rip @ 7X=perfect. Pioneer's rip @ 2X = Crappy. Yes, very difficult decision.

Oh by the way, Mac's DVD Player 4.0 would not recognize the Pioneer drive as a valid drive, so DVD Player would not start up. It DID recognize the Plextor drive and played movies flawlessly.

And these are my adventures before I burned a single byte.

Now, I know what you’re gonna say: “You shouldn’t use a burner to rip because it degrades the laser. Get a DVD-ROM drive for that.”

So does this mean all you pro-rippers with G4s have an external drive? My G4 can only hold one DVD drive internally. That means if I get a drive just to rip, either the burning or ripping drive will have to be external.

Now my two choices are: 1) Stick to Plextor’s ridiculous requirement to press the eject button for 3 seconds every time I want to rip a DVD. Or... 2) Get an external DVD-ROM ripper, which hopefully will rip faster than 2x.

I realize that the faster the rip, the greater the chances of read errors. I’m willing to settle for 8X instead of 16.

Questions, comments, gripes, complaints?

[JoachimS]

There is an old version of VLC that had the garbled frame every now and then.

You can play a ripped VIDEO_TS folder with DVD Player, check the file menu.

Make the Pioneer compatible by installing PatchBurn.

Cheers,

Joachim

[decay]

did you try using Patchburn to enable Apple support of either drive?

http://www.patchburn.de/download.html

also, you should play the DVD with Apple's DVD Player to set the region before you rip.

dk

[Case]

also, you should play the DVD with Apple's DVD Player to set the region before you rip.

Not needed with MTR.

[galactica]

know I have to wait for the firmware patch for Mac to come out (I don't know any PeeCee users) before I can take full advantage of the features of this drive.

What features are missing? I have the 108 and it does everything it says it will out of the box with patchburn III installed?!

Just wondering what a person is missing by not patching these pioneer drives

[willrob]

In the case of the 109, a region free patch (not part of any Pioneer official firmware), faster ripping speed (12X is possible), and with the official 1.40 firmware support for newer media and burnbing speeds is available.

It doesn't make much sense for Pioneer to not supply a Mac interface for these firmware updates, since Apple has been using their drives for years.. They must be in colusion with Apple on this, so that Apple doesn't have to take up the support problems when a user flubs the update.


>>Just wondering what a person is missing by not patching these pioneer drives <<

[terryj]

You guys crack me up..even I was a total newb once but gosh!!
First, lets take it from the top:
The Pioneer was ok.
YOU FORGOT TO ENABLE YOUR REGION CODING!!!

You do this by FIRST playing a DVD in the drive, then YOU
MAKE THE FIRST RIP. Without telling DVD Player what region
you got, it won't be set to do ANYTHING, and all your rips
will be garbage, and will playback like you described.
YES CASE, you do not need to set it for MTR, but You DO need to set it for DVD PLAYER, which the two apps don't share any information on REGION CODING, because only one( MTR) uses it to set the region of a VIDEO_TS,
while the other (DVD PLAYER) uses it to set the region
coding OF THE HARDWARE.

A little secret: I ran into this at work upgrading my DA 466
from a stock CD-RW to a -106.
I put it in the back of my mind for
when I got my -109 recently....

Second, the DVD drive should be installed INTERNALLY,
meaning pitch your old drive, put in the new drive.
No, DVD Player still DOES NOT WORK with external
DVD Drives/burners. Apple will probably never make it so.
its part of the "great colusion/conspiracy"....

and yes, in your effort of searching the forums, you obviously
forgot to read up on Patchburn 3, which is required for
your mac's OS to "validate" the new internal drive.

[schmeg]

Second, the DVD drive should be installed INTERNALLY,
meaning pitch your old drive, put in the new drive.
No, DVD Player still DOES NOT WORK with external
DVD Drives/burners.

DVD Player has always worked just fine with my FireWire NEC 2510 drive. Doesn't behave any differently than with my old internal Pioneer 104.

Just installed a Pioneer 109 five minutes ago in my mirror-door G4 and it works fine without Patchburn (using MTR and Toast 6.0.7 so far...). I only have 8x DVD-R discs on hand so I can't verify max burning speed, but it's burning fine at 8x.

[decay]

Patchburn is mainly needed for iApps support (iDVD, iTunes, etc)

dk

[terryj]

Decay is correct...Unless you ever need to use iDVD
or want to burn a CD in iTunes, you don't need Patchburn 3,
Toast 6 will work just fine. You should however, upgrade to Toast 6.09 as soon as possible.

As for DVD Player working with your NEC
schmeg,
you are in a minority.
DVD Player 4.0 still doesn't play nice with
external DVD drives for the rest of us,
or this could apply to you:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?13@803.drrGaD5CXVQ.8@.68aa65fd/1

but for the rest of us:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?128@803.drrGaD5CXVQ.16@.68a7891f

[schmeg]

Fascinating! Yes, I also have an internal DVD burner -- I didn't realize that DVD Player was so finicky.

FWIW, installation of the new Pioneer 109 into a mirror-drive G4 was pretty easy. I wrestled for ages trying to remove the entire faceplate of the drive, before I realized that the "bezel" that everyone talks about with this installation is just the plastic cover of the TRAY. Thank god I didn't succeed in wrenching the entire faceplate off. What a goof.

Anyway, once that snag was solved it was an easy installation. Came from newegg.com with 1.17 firmware installed. I primarily burn 8X DVD-R so far, and that works just fine without alterations.

[willrob]

>>I primarily burn 8X DVD-R so far, and that works just fine without alterations<<

Best Buy has Verbatium 16x on sale this week: 25 disk spindle for $12.00. manufacturer code is Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. Toasts burns them at 16x in my 109.