Pioneer Electronics announced the DVR-A04, Pioneer's fourth generation combination DVD/CD recordable/re-recordable drive. The DVR-A04, supports multiple recording formats including DVD-R, DVD-RW, CD-R and CD-RW as well as CD buffer underrun protection, support for high speed CD-RW media, vertical-mounting capability, smaller form factor and with a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $499.

"With the new DVR-A04, recording your own DVDs is an exciting capability that is now accessible to even more computer users," said Andy Parsons, senior vice president of industrial video/mass storage sales and marketing, Pioneer Electronics (USA), Inc., Business Solutions Division. "This drive represents Pioneer's latest effort to package the features we believe both consumers and professional users want at an attractive price."

The rapid adoption of recordable DVD for video authoring and archiving by consumers and professionals has led industry analysts to estimate that 3.9 million recordable DVD drives will ship with PCs in 2002, a number expected to triple by 2003 and soar to 20 million by 2004.

Pioneer has helped to lead the recordable DVD movement through the introduction of innovative products such as the world's first DVD recordable drive in 1998, the first 4.7 GB capacity DVD-R drive in 1999, the award-winning DVR-A03 DVD-R/RW/CD-R/RW drive in 2001, and now the fourth generation DVR-A04.

"Both professional users and consumers realize that the largest application for recordable DVD is video. For this reason, we have always believed that playback compatibility with most DVD video players and DVD-ROM drives is the key feature driving mainstream adoption of DVD-R as the format of choice for recording and archiving video content," added Parsons.

In addition to supporting DVD-R, the DVR-A04 also writes and reads DVD-RW, a re-recordable format that can also be played on many DVD video players and DVD-ROM drives for use with content that changes frequently, testing of titles before committing to DVD-R, and data storage applications such as system backups. Both DVD-R and DVD-RW are approved members of the DVD Forum family of formats. The drive also supports reading and writing of CD-R and CD-RW media, and can be used as a DVD-ROM and CD-ROM drive as well.

Pricing and Availability

The DVR-A04 will be available later this month and carries a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $499.