 |
|
|
|
In the Forums... |
Posted: April 18, 2001 Written by: Dustin "TimmyC" Jones Performance How did the drive perform? Flawlessly. It was fast in both DVD and CD applications, installing programs, and everything was a breeze. In-fact, the drive performed nearly the same as Pioneer advertised. I feel no need to bombard you with pictures of benchmarks or anything of that kind, as it is a tad redundant; since most CD/DVD drives perform as indicated.  DVD playback The most important reason of buying a DVD drive is to watch DVDs, so this is the most important part of the review. Once again, Pioneer amazes me. On my system, (1135MHz, 512mb, GF 2) every single DVD I threw at it played back nearly perfectly in WinDVD. In-fact, I set aside some time to watch as many movies as possible. Each and every one went from start to finish without a problem. I managed to watch Gladiator, The Matrix, Pitch Black and a one-hour DVD with neat clips like extreme machines and some trippy light show things. Now, remember what that guy from Creative said about DVD changing the way we use our home theatre? Well, I believe him now. After seeing DVD in action, my jaw actually dropped. I'm not kidding. During the course of Gladiator, I found myself sitting right in front of the monitor, gawking at the detail level in everything. I even brought a friend over who's got a wall full of VHS movies and a big TV and he had the same reaction I did. DVD video is unreal, that's all I can say. What about sound? Well, outputting from my SB Live! Value to my surround sound mini system, the sound was great. Everything came in clear and real; it was really nice to say the least. Problems? I did have one problem with the drive that I feel needs mentioning. One particular brand of CD-R refused to work on the Pioneer. I have a large amount of Maxell CD-R's and none of them seemed to want to work on the Pioneer. I did try some older Sony ones and they worked, so perhaps it's just something with the Maxell CDs. Conclusion What can I say? I love this drive - it's simply wonderful in every way. I had no problems whatsoever with normal CDs and everything worked like Pioneer claimed -- that's something not many companies can attest to. Considering you can pick up this drive for less than $120 USD, I don't see how you could go wrong. Pros: (+) Fast CD/DVD performance (+) Superb DVD playback (+) Looks awesome (+) Good price Cons: (-) Some CD-R's may not work Overall Rating: 9.5 / 10.0  I'd like to thank the great guys at ActionBlaster.com for supplying this drive to me; they run a great store and have one hell of a selection. |
||
|
| |||
|---|---|---|---|