pioneer A05 and 105

[tonyburns]

are they both the same burner
is one better than the other
what cheap dvd-r work in this buners
where in the uk can i but them
thankx

[IvIark]

Both the same. The A05 is shipped with a software bundle, the 105 is the bare drive only.

I've had mine for a couple of months now and it's worked fine with every type of media I've thrown at it which have been:

Datawrite 1x Yellowtops (Princo)
Datawrite 2x Matt Grey (TDK G02)
Ritek G03
Traxdata 1x (same as Ritek above)
Samsung BeAll
Zero Defex 1x
Datawrite DVD-RW (Princo)

[ROBERT BLACK]

How about the firmware? Is it the same in both drives? If it's the same drive why not release it with the A05 designation instead of a seperate one? What software is included with the A05. Thanks for answering these tedious questions.

[sdlehman]

Basic burning software included with A05. MyDVD I think.

[Gil T Pleasure]

I know they are the same drive (one's OEM and the other is retail.. can't remember which is which), but why did Cendyne DVR-105 rate worse than the Pioneer DVR-A05?

[ROBERT BLACK]

Gil, you hit it. From what I see, the Cendyne, the LG?, and the A05/105 are all the same drive. So why the difference in discrepancy(A05/105) and ratings in the reviews?

[Faustus]

My guess would be because laser alignment may vary from unit to unit.

to back this up I tell you this story. My A04 died and I sent it to pioneer for repairs. It comes back saying no problem. So I buy some expensive media and boom it works fine. Seems the laser is slightly out of alignment... not enough to be a problem with Pioneer but enough so that the cheap media is no longer working. The inexpensive stuff just doens't have the error margin to take it I guess. Shame really Pioneer wont fix what isn't broken and the Price of Verbatim and Apples adds up fast.

Lucky for me I have a new DVR-105 to riteks.

[jaeshin]

If I remember it correctly, Cendyne drive has a label that says Pioneer 105 on it.

Regarding the Cnet test... I think they should test it again with the new firmware installed (test says it was tested with 1.0 version). Firmware makes a lot of differences as well. By the way, Cendyne also accepts all Pioneer firmwares so I don't think there is anything different between Cendyne, 105, and A05 at all.

[gcutler]

Any difference is marketing and support. So you see that the cost of Pioneers overhead vs the virutal no overhead (support, bundled SW, lameo web site) cost of Cendyne allows Cendyne to sell the identical unit cheaper than Pioneer (Pioneer has to develop the firmware, keep up the web site, pay some major executive bonuses, etc), Cendyne just has to put their box cover on and ship it (as you'll never get thru to Cendyne support and the web site is probably updated once a year )

[mememe77]

for pioneer a05/dvr-105 owners heres a useful read and tool for flashing firmware to 1.30,region-free RPC-1,faster ripping speeds and enables 2xwriting on 1xmedia(just confirmed this myself on a datawrite yellow 1x!)
http://forum.firmware-flash.com/viewtopic.php?t=12883
...but beware the fake http://forum.firmware-flash.com/viewtopic.php?t=13370 Good luck!