Back to basics - back to buring bits! Thanks to Pioneer Europe, we have had the chance to play around with the brand new Pioneer DVR-116D recorder. The DVR-116D is a high speed burner that records DVD-R media up to 20x speed and DVD+R DL with the maximum speed of 12x. On the other hand [...]
Pioneer BDC-202 is an interesting combo drive that brings you the features of a Blu-ray BD-ROM drive and a DVD recorder. As such it is an interesting choice for any home computer, but especially for HTPCs due to the Blu-ray playback features. We have just started testing the drive, and as usual our primary interest [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Graphically and structurally enhanced, the user interface of this standard benchmarking tool for CD, DVD and Blu-ray drives allows all key functions, such as Benchmark, DiscInfo, DiscQuality and ScanDisc, to be directly accessed and managed through tabs in the main window.
Thanks to specific error messages, test results permit greater differentiation. For example, ScanDisc now also [...]
Like you all know it’s not always easy to pick up a decent DVD recordable media out there. Even so-called “good” brands like Verbatim, TDK, Maxell etc are not always bullet proof choices. So what can you do? Well you need to do some work to see if your discs are good, decent or bad. [...]
No matter what DVD-to-DVD-R compressor or transcoding software you use, MenuShrink will improve the quality of the backup. The scheme is simple - by replacing the animated menus with still picture some more free space is recovered. This free space is then used for the actual movie, resulting in higher average bit rate thus giving [...]
