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.

I started by recording 16x DVD-R media with a Pioneer DVR-115D recorder. The first and most serious implicationof quality issues was when one of the Imation DVD-R discs produced a read error at the end of the disc. The quality scans were not too impressive eithe. There were no huge peaks of errors, but the total amounts cumulated to much higher figures than we like to see in quality media. Lite-On DH20A3P recorder produced similar results with even higher total amounts of errors, but this time the disc was at least readble.

The DVD+R media wasn’t any better producing very similar quality scan results than DVD-R. Using both the Pioneer and Lite-On the total amounts of PIF in these scans is much higher than with premium media. You can see the difference yourself by having a look at the scan results, where Verbatim / Mitsubishi Chemicals manufactured Imation branded media delivers way better results than these curren Moser Baer India products.

Overall this is a very disappointing test result. Imation is a huge brand with a large market share, and their RICOH and MCC made media convinced me that they are now on a safe path. Whether the fault is Imation’s or Moser Baer’s, it is hard to tell. MBI has also manufactured quality media in the past for Imation, and many other brands, but at the moment it seems that Imation or MBI is not the best pick.

Be sure to check out our MediaBase for more DVD recordable media test results!

The specs: The full list of technical specifications is probably longer than this whole review, so we will not go through in detail, but you can check it out at the Pioneer website and here are the key features:

• 20X CAV (27.70 Mbytes/sec) writing speed for DVD-R/+R
• Write Speed DVD+RW 8X Z-CLV (11.08 Mbytes/sec) and DVD-RW 6X CAV (8.31 Mbytes/sec)
• 10X Z-CLV (13.85 Mbytes/sec) writing speed for DVD-R DL / +R DL (Dual / Double Layer media)
• Multi-effect LCD Tilt Servo Compensator Mechanism
• Ultra-DRA (Dynamic Resonance Absorber) low vibration mechanism
• Performance adusting firmware
• Disc-Resonance Stabiliser
• Supports “Buffer Under Run” protection (CD and DVD)

Ever since the DVR-110 the Pioneer models have been incremental upgrades of the previous models, and the DVR-115D is no exception. This strategy has the benefit that the product is pretty mature from the first day. If we compare the recording quality of DVR-115D and DVR-112, we can notice that they are highly similar, but DVR-115 in some occasions can improve over the older model. It offers 20x over speed recording for certain top quality 16x media, and 18x for some as well. It also looks like that the firmware has been tuned to handle certain media better – at least we found speed and quality improvements with Prodisc made discs.

Test results

As of today (3-Jan-2008) we have tested 12 different medias with this drive and the results have been submitted to MediaBase, but we will continue testing and using the drive in our tech bench and every media test we make in the future with the DVR-115D will be added to the database as well. The tests so far focus on single layer DVD-R and +R media and we have now a pretty good idea what the drive can deliver. Read the full test results here, and on the right there are three examples.

First example shows how Pioneer DVR-115 records a Verbatim Advanced AZO+ DVD-R (16x) at 20x speed with great results. The second example shows 18x recording with a Datawrite (Prodisc) DVD+R – usually DVD recorders offer only 12x speed for this media. The last example shows 10x recording with Verbatim DVD-R DL media. So if the media is good, the Pioneer will deliver great quality and top notch recording speeds. Pioneer also has a pretty good after sales support typically delivering a few firmware updates for added media support and quality improvements later in the product life cycle.

Despite the excellent results with quality media, the Pioneer is not the best drive for low quality and/or faked MID media. Pioneer drives in general do not seem to be as flexible for adjusting themselves for low or varying quality or faked MID medias. Pioneer doesn’t have a feature like Lite-Ons HyperTuning which allows generation of write strategy on the fly, nor it is currently supported by DVD media testing software for making quality scans.

Conclusions

The Pioneer DVR-115D continues Pioneer’s tradition of delivering rock solid and durable recorders, but with nothing especially new or surprising. The firmware has been fine tuned since DVR-112 and the write speeds accelerated. The DVR-115 offers 18-20x over speeding possibilities for more 16x media than it’s predecessor. It does not offer any geeky extra features to play around with, but if decent or premium quality media is used, the DVR-115 will deliver very good results. Pioneer’s traditionally good firmware support combined to good built quality will give it a good and long life cycle. If you simply want a recorder that just works, then we consider Pioneer DVR-115D as one best choices on the market and give it 4 out of 5 stars

“…if the media is good, the Pioneer will deliver great quality and top notch recording speeds.”

Thanks to specific error messages, test results permit greater differentiation. For example, ScanDisc now also detects C1/C2 and PI/PO errors and organizes the results by track (audio CD), chapter (video DVD) or file (data disk), making it significantly easier to locate defective data. Disk content data available under DiscInfo was also expanded to include information on physical formats and the number of layers or sessions. With a click of the mouse, the results can be copied to the clipboard as a text or as HTML.

You can publish your Nero CD-DVD Speed test results online at BitBurners.com MediaBase (no registration needed), study the test results made by others in the comprehensive database.

Author: Erik Deppe / Nero
License: Freeware
Download: Click here!

The guide not yet transferred to our new web site platform, but you can read it for our archives HERE.