External Pioneer DVR A04 or 104

[the_macman]

I'm desperately trying to find an external (USB or FireWire) version of the Pioneer DVD-R writer, but have heard many comments that external versions do NOT work for one reason or another.

Would be grateful if anyone has something to contribute!

Thanks in advance: The MacMan

[stvp]

Hey There,
I just recently bought a DVR104 and I also bought a Pyro firewire hardrive enclosure for it (approx. $99), and hooked it up externally via the firewire port and it works like a charm, as a result I didn't have to rip out my DVD Rom drive or my CD burner, and you can turn it on and off at will, the enclosure comes with a built in fan so there shouldn't be heat issues, it was a breeze to hook up and Windows XP noticed the drive immediately. I've burned like 4 dvd's without a problem.
hope this helps,
StvP

[AntnyMD]

... and from a Mac perspective, I purchased and received this week the Pioneer 104 drive. I purchased the LaCie branded external version, direct from the manufacturer. I use an iMac G3. I have burned a few DVDs so far with no problems. I found a copy of DVDPlayer software that would fully install on my G3 (in OS X) so I can now watch DVD-Video on my computer! Admittedly I had to develop a work-around -- DVDPlayer doesnt recognize the external drive easily. So what I did was create a tiny DVD-Video image that I mount via Toast first. Mounting this image via Toast creates a "virtual" native DVD drive, which auto-launches the DVDPlayer app. Once the app gets launched by this DVD-Video image, I can then play other actual DVDs from the LaCie. Ripping DVDs does NOT require mounting a DVD-image first, though.

I'm shocked at how fast this thing burns a DVD at 1x!

[whodges]

I saw this when I was looking for a good price on the A04.

http://www.esbuy.com/enclosures.html

They also sell the A04 with the enclosure.