To all planing to buy pioneer AO3 DVR

[dazzle3]

If you plan on buying a DVR-A03 please be aware of the following:

- There is no region free firmware for this drive, and it could be quite a while before there is one

- You will only be able to burn at 1x speed on non Pioneer DVD-R media (while you can burn 2x on Pioneer DVD-R's). Again, there is no available firmware to bypass that.

I think you should really be considering buy another manufacturer's DVR unit instead.

Don't be mistaken, I am usually pro Pioneer (after all, I host the Pioneer RPC-1 firmware pages).
However, I have had no other choice recently but to condemn their policy in that matter.

[alkieman]

The drive is available region free from Techronics in the UK and a few others too.

I've succesfully burned at 2x with Pioneer media and with some unbranded media bought from a local computer store. However, the TDK media I used did burn at only 1x. I recently upgraded the firmware of the drive too so maybe if I tried the TDK discs now they would burn at 2x, but who knows as I don't have any TDK discs left.

[daren b]

maybe this will change as pioneer are releasing the new ao4 feb/march i know it writes at 8x cdr/w instead of 4x also udma33 compatible the ao3 wasn't
but i doubt they will change the speed issues on media
soon some one will write a f/ware patch to disable this im sure

[dazzle3]

daren b follow link
http://www.techtronics.com/uk/shop/50-pioneer-dvr-a03-multi-region-dvd-recorder.html

[daren b]

thats an ao3 beleive me the ao4 is on the cards i have this on good authoritie my suppliers are awaiting deleiverie as we speak also has been confirmed by pioneer tech (uk)
pioneer have no stock of ao3's left in uk only the ones in shops thats probablie why pc world were doing them at £299
a few weeks ago to clear the stock
that link only refers to ao3 writing region free dvd's which is standard and states 5 region changes for reading so is not true region free

[3dcandy]

And why is this such a problem?
If you burn your own DVD's then surely you'll burn them as region 0 and anybody can play them....
This is only a problem if you are only installing the A03, and no other dvd drives, and IMHO that's just plain stupid considering the cost of a DVD drive to use as a reader...

I can understand wanting a multi-region DVD burner, but with current legislation that would be difficult. For authoring purposes then you need to buy a high-end burner that supports such standards, and can also cope with Macrovision CSS etc.

[daren b]

its not aproblem to me
all ao3's can burn a multi region dvd out of the box its your authoring progs that dictate this if you ripp a region locked dvd you just patch the ifo to region free it when burnt
dvd decrypter does this for you in the tools

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: daren b on 2002-01-16 17:36:38 ]</font>