Usually when we review drives we focus mainly on the recording quality, and media quality scans. However in the case of Pioneer DVR-215 it quickly became obvious that it wasn’t the most interesting way to go, as it seems to deliver identical results in terms of recording quality than the recently reviewed Pioneer DVR-115D. This being the case, we decided to take a different angle to this “review” and study the impact of the different connection methods of these two drives. Consumers today have one more selection to make when they are purchasing DVD recordable drives: Whether to choose a SATA (Serial ATA) or a PATA (Parallel ATA) connected drive. Even thought the benefits gained by using a SATA connection seem quite obvious and significant, there is more than one side to this story.

Read more »

After quite a bit of consideration, I finally decided to order myself a PlayStation 3, the 40GB model. Unfortunately I had to send it back for replacement or repairs, as the unit I received was obviously faulty. Interestingly, I am not the only European customer that has bought a faulty PS3 40GB unit. Read on to learn more about it, and my first impressions on the king of consoles.

I bought my device from Germany, as there seemed to be the best deals avaiable for us Europeans. The German starter pack came with two wireless controllers, and two games: Uncharted - Drake’s Fortune and Need For Speed: Pro Street. Overall a very nice pack to get you going.

Read more »

Maxell is a well known media manufacturer that has been in the business for decades. They used to ship media of their own using Maxell’s media indetifiers (MID), but recently the manufacturer of their media has varied a lot. We tested their current 16x DVD recordable offering for both, DVD-R and DVD+R. The DVD-R discs are manufactured by RITEK and seem to deliver pretty nice quality, but the DVD+R by RICOH is somewhat disappointing. All the results are uploaded to MediaBase, but read on for some further discussion.

Read more »

Not too many authors in the blogosphere seem to be interesting in DVD recording and blank media quality. While the recorder and media technology has evolved and matured over the years, the quality of available media on the market still varies a lot. In fact it can vary from absolute rubbish to high quality and reliable media. I had the chance to check out the current 16x speed offering of Imation for both standards, the DVD-R and DVD+R.

Imation is one of those brands that outsources their production completely, and therefore one can get all kinds of media from various manufacturers under the Imation label. Another major label with similar strategy is Memorex. I remember being very upset in Imation in the early CD-R recording age (8x speed was hot then), when they distributed horrible media under their label. Later I have found some excellent 8x DVD-R media from Imation (by RICOH) and and equally great DVD+R 16x Imation media (by Verbatim / MCC). At the moment however, they seem to be shipping media made by MBI, Moser Baer India. I picked a few DVD-R and DVD+R 16x speed media from a huge stock of Imation media and gave them a whirl using Pioneer and LiteOn recorders.

Read more »

DVD recording technology has not taken any quantum leaps recently. The recording speeds are pretty close to the velocities physically possible, and overall the technology is quite mature. Nevertheless it is nice to see the vendors still releasing new and improved models. Pioneer DVR-115D continues the famous product line of Pioneer Electronics and while it doesn’t anything dramatically new or different, it has some improvements over the previous models.Pioneer has definitely been one of the better manufacturers of DVD recorders and from the out side the Pioneer DVR-115D seems very similar to the previous model that we tested (DVR-112). It has a pretty rigid feel to it, which makes it positively stand out from the cheapest recorders out there. But the interesting question is of course how does it burn?

Read more »