"..Pioneer announced shipping of sample quantities of the DVR-S201, the second-generation DVD-R drive that boosts the medium's capacity from 3.95GB to a DVD-Video/ROM-equivalent 4.7GB. The new DVD-R also offers a dramatic price reduction, listing at $5,400, a mere fraction of first-generation DVD-R's $17,000 tag.

The only writable DVD format that guarantees compatibility with all existing DVD-ROM and DVD-Video playback devices, DVD-R has until now been primarily used by high-end developers and DVD service bureaus for title prototyping, disc-checking, and premastering. The DVR-S201 is also designed for use in archiving and other industrial storage applications where data security is at a premium, featuring incremental writing capability unavailable in first-generation DVD-Recordable drives.

The external SCSI-2 device writes both 4.7GB and 3.95GB DVD-R media at 1X and reads at 2X; a full 4.7GB disc takes approximately one hour to record.."