Hello I'm soon to be an ex-Pioneer DVR ao5 user.Im sick and tired of visiting forums and reading about 'power calibration errors', 'internal target failure',useless firmware upgrades,'disc manufacture ID codes,inks and dust.I ve done just about everything (just like a lot of ppl here by the looks of it !).Ive got enuff useless dvds to keep me in coasters for the rest of my life plus stacks of expensive (Ritek,Verbatim,Sony)media in the cupboard sitting redundantly on spindles.Ive spent enuff money to buy more than one new burner and spent so much time sitting in front of me pc (operating system[+everything else]) reinstalls are a killer)that me chair looks like its on it last legs (pun unintentional)and ive smoked so many fags that i need a relay team to take away the ashtrays!!!.---So after that really satisfying RANT --- Can you ppl recommend me a new drive sub £70 ish that will actually allow me to burn DVD's ?? It doesnt have to be fast 4x will do,single layer is fine preferably + and -,but it must do what it says on the tin ! If all the people having trouble with Pioneer drives took them out,went to Pioneer uk HQ and posted them thru the letter box they would need a fleet of 18 yard skips by the end of the week..(everyone pause...and consider actually doing it...lol) SiKPupE (hope to be hapE bunE soon !)
SikPupE, I don't know exactly what is causing your problem. Pioneer is one of the top burners on the market. I have a 106D That hasn't produced a coaster yet. Most Pioneer owners I know feel the same way. If you really think its the drive and want a different brand, the only other one I would suggest above the Pioneer is Plextor drives. If my 106D ever dies, another Pioneer Dual Layer burner will replace it. Jerry _X_X_X_X_X_[small][/small]
As Jerry746 has stated, I think you have had a bad experience......... I have never used anything BUT Pioneer, 103, 106 and now the 108. The other 2 are still going strong in other users PC's (especially the 103, which has been in 4 PC's now and done MANY burns and still going). Personally you can get ANY dvd burner for the budget you are looking at, NEC3500, Pioneer 108 (both are dual layers and sub £70) which will serve your purpose, I think the Plextor is a little more BUT a good solid burner, Liteons are ok aswell and cheap..... The choice is yours really, but if it is one for me to recommend I would stick with Pioneer and plum for the 108................ I think you will find that this is quite inaccurate, and could probably be attributed to other brands instead.......... Software is the main cause for burning issues, especially if you are reguarly flashing drives, this is risky and should only be done to overcome a specific problem and not because of a 'trend'........ Hope you get the 'Pioneer' hunger back.........Good luck
I agree with Jerry and BaaBaa - Pioneer burners are normally very high quality and reliable. Over many hundreds of burns, i have yet to have a failure. Strongly believe that many burning problems are related to either operator malfunction or software conflicts/spyware etc.
Thanx for the comment ppl, and im glad that you have no probs with you Pioneers.Ill give you some more details about what happens,has been done etc and we'll see.I openly welcome any help that means i dont have to spend money on a new drive. For about a year my drive burned fine,using Nero,Instant etc.I could burn at Maximum no probs but most of the time i deliberately burned at 1x in the hope it would prolong drive life.I always used the same brand of disc DataWrite Classic (grey top) because they worked well with my standalone.I favoured Nero for burniing. Got my first 'internal target failure',just after Lead in ,when halfway thru a stack of disc,media fault i thought threw disc away tried again and again,disgarded the rest of the stack and went for DW yellow (4x),no luck,Sony (4x),no luck. Firmware upgrade from Pioneer site (1.33) gave me 1 or 2 burns then some midburn fails then nothing still 'internal target failure' but 'pwr calibration error' as well Downloaded pdf from Pioneer 'announcement on media' and 'how to show manufacturer id'.Tried Pioneer disc other Sony 2x,Ritek GO2 all of which are on recommended and tested list in pdf. Burn failures also with DVD shrink,Instant,dvdSanta and Sonic MyDVD(bundled with drive) Another firmware flash from GradiusRPC (1.33 + support for multiregion/media compatibility) Took out all PCI cards and uninstalled all software pertaining to them.No luck. Uninstall drive took it out,cleaned lens with Isopropanol alc.(99.98 % pure chemical analysis grade,not the usual cheap crap you can buy-i work in Carbon Organic chemical manufacture).Reinstalled with new IDE cable,Secondary Master. Ive tried every setting in all the software all in vain. Trawled loads of forums reading hundreds of posts about the same problem (seeCDFreaks theyve got pages on this). Along with write problem i also had a problem with readind/recognising discs that i had archived stuff on about 70 GB of DataWrite rw's which was very annoying,thousands of mp3,loads of DivX etc all lost in the ether(not the anesthetic, see 16th Century Physics-lol)..well all gone-unrecoverable (ok this could be cracking or delamination) Ive done so much to try to solve this that if there is anymore I cant remember it at the moment So you probably start to see my annoyance with this pesky piece of technojunk and my moaning is not unfounded.This has been going on for about a year now (Im not a quitter but I would like to stay sane).If ANYONE helps me solve this I am willing to fly half way around the world and give them a big kiss (no matter how ugly and regardless of sexual orientation),or I could contain my excitement and just be extremely thankful. SiKPupE (still sick cos Ive got 100 GB of VOB ready to burn)
I have had my Pioneer 105 for the longest, I have never had any problems with it. My brother has that unit now and he has not had any issues with it. As far as a replacement NEC and Lite-on DVD are solid units I have one of each and I’m very happy with them.
I'm with SikPup! Although I haven't yet gone through the annoying measure he has in trying to figure out my 'Power Calibration Area Error' msgs because I have just started having this problem. I have a AMD PC with 1G of RAM, DVR-104, and Nero Burning Rom 6.3. I use DVD Shrink and DVD Decryptor. DVD Shrink wont let me rip back ups anymore - Copy Protection Error(????) and Nero wont let me burn 1x or 2x. I have firmware version 1.41 for the DVR 104. I have read posts here and on other forums such as Pioneer's and Meritline's, and I've read: 1) update ASPI drivers - done this and zilch 2) try different media instead of the GO4 I've been using successfully for a year now - zilch. I don't want to change my operation! I will try changing the power cables for the DVR 104 so that it doesn't share power (that's if it is that way). I will try switching my MAC's Pioneer AO4 to my PC also. I have recently installed Windows Service Pack 2 - could this be a problem? Could my laser be shot due to all of the burning I have put it through? I use DVD Decryptor to rip the whole batch of files on my DVD's so that when I figure out this problem I can shrink in DVD Shrink and burn again with Nero. Someone has to have answers to these problems! I want to buy the DVR 108, so I guess it may happen if I can't figure this out! thanks!
Thanks Red Ant, Liteon sounds like the one I will go for,aria.co.uk have retail version sub £60 which is multi format etc so it will be an upgrade for me. Still keep the post coming,if anyone has any suggestions cos i dont like to be beaten (except when Im Mandy at the weekends) and would like to help anyone else who has this problem.I have loads of bookmarks of forums whose members would love the solution to this. SiKPupE
I'M BURNING AGAIN,I think the problem may lie with a Windows/DVD-RW incompatibility. I decided to give it all one more try, so i uninstall the drive using Device Manager,(no restart in between these two steps),turned pc off,took the drive out,opened it and recleaned the lens (although it looked clean).Put it back to together.On start up drive was recognised ok.I tried a few of the old DVD-R that it previously would not read,now reading fine,burned some .VOB at 4x using Nero which it previously wouldnt do.HERES WHERE IT ALL FELL OVER--->Put a DVD-RW...thats RW... and a box headed 'Windows' up with a green bar saying 'working...'.The box closed.After this it would NOT READ the aforementioned DVD-R's and it would NOT write again. I uninstall,turned off (unplugged),disconnected IDE and power cable,(no clean obviously),put it all back together and hey presto it all worked again no probs. I HAVE THROWN AWAY ALL THE DVD-RW's and wont use them again.DVD-R are cheap enough now,http;//www.ukdvdr.co.uk is very near me. In the last week Ive burned nearly a whole stack of DataWrite Yellow all playing in my stanalone. Hope this helps someone else ! SiKPupE (but now only in name)
