1. Introduction
Pioneer DVD-105S
IDE DVD ROM - Page 1
Introduction
Pioneer recently released the fastest DVD-Rom on the market: It supports
16x DVD reading and 40x CD-Rom reading speeds. Having already owned Pioneer's
10x DVD-Rom model (DVD-104S), we decided to put the new and the old model down
the benchmark arena and see if the advertised 16x reading speed really makes
any difference to the end user or not.
As you may know, all DVD-Rom drives produced after January 1st
2000 are RPC2 compliant. This means that now the region lock is based on both
hardware (drive) and software (player) and it gives the user the chance to change
the region only 5 times. After that the player is locked to the last region
change. Read more about it over
here.
- Package :
We received the OEM version of Pioneer 16x DVD Rom (DVD-105S), which included
only the drive. As you can see in the pictures, this model has a slot-in system
for loading discs. The drive is also available with a traditional tray mechanism,
as DVD-115. For the time being, the drive is released only with an IDE interface,
and no info has been announced about a SCSI model. The front of the drive is
identical to the 104S:
- Installation :
We
installed Pioneer DVD-105S as master on the secondary IDE bus. The drive identified
itself as Pioneer DVD-Rom DVD-105 from both DOS and Windows. We enabled DMA
under WinME and after that we were ready to start the test. We also installed
the latest PowerDVD version (3.0) for measuring the DVD performance.
The supplied drive was an August 2000 model with v1.22 firmware
revision. You must specify one region when you first try to use the drive as
a DVD player. We selected Region 2 for our tests and we had another 4 hardware
changes left before the drive locks forever.
However
users have found ways to overcome this problem. There is a site called Pioneer's
Region Free Heaven which has *patched* region free firmware (RPC1) for almost
all Pioneer DVD-Rom models. If you need to change regions frequently visit this
site. You will find something interesting there for sure.
If you decide to use the region free firmware read the instructions
very carefully. Of course the drive can be flashed back with future original
Pioneer firmware updates but the region-free status will be lost.
Test Machine :
WinMe OS
Soyo 7VCA
Celeron II 566 over clocked to 850 MHz
128MB SDRAM PC 133
WD 18GB UDMA 66
Quantum Fireball EX 6.4 GB UDMA 33
DAWI 2975 - PCI (ULTRA) SCSI Host Adapter
CL GForce2 GTS
Plextor UltraPlex 40max firmware v1.04
Pioneer DVD-105S firmware v1.22
Pioneer DVD-104S firmware v2.02
2. Data Tests
Pioneer
DVD-105S IDE DVD-ROM - Page
2
Data Tests
Test Method:
- SCSI Mechanic v3.0: This was used to compare the Pioneer's 16x
vs. 10x DVD-ROm I/O performance (see charts). We used a pressed CD containing
PlexTools v1.06 for all of the tests.
- CD Speed 99 v0.80 was also used to check the drive performance with
pressed CDs. For that test we used PlexTools v1.06 original CD.
- SCSI Mechanic v3.0 results
As you can see from the graph above, the DVD-105S model is
much faster (as expected) than the previous 10x model. Noticeable is the high
Average Random I/O throughput over the 40x CDVD-W drives we tested in past.
The drive has averaged 5.0mb/s which is very good.
- CD Speed 99 v0.80 results:
Using CD Speed 0.80, we can see that the DVD-105S model is
again faster than the previous 104S model.
The DVD-105S has much higher seek times than the 104s does.
RW reading
tests
For the RW tests we used Ricoh HS RW media written at 10x speed:
The 105 model is much improved over the previous 104S model
and can deliver up to 24x when reading HS RW media.
CloneCD Tests
- Verdict of CloneCD Tests:
Both Pioneer drives performed very bad in CloneCD tests. The drives have
big trouble when trying to read CDs with errors (3h to make image of protected
CD). This may be a drawback for possible buyers. Notice that both drives don't
support reading of SubChannel data, as CloneCD reported.
3. DAE Tests
Pioneer
DVD-105S DVD-ROM - Page
3
DAE Tests
Test Method:
We used CD DAE 99 v0.2 with AudioCDs in order to check DAE performance
of the Pioneer DVD-105S and we compared it with the DVD-104s model.
- Pressed AudioCD results:
As with the previous 104S model, Pioneer 105S has its DAE speed locked
at 13x max. Not the best DAE performance you can get nowadays:
- Princo 74min AudioCD:
The same thing happened with CDR media. Both drives delivered around 12.5x
average DAE speed, which is far behind than what the competition offers
- Advanced DAE Quality
Here is a very interesting situation. The 16x model (105S)
seems to have worse DAE quality (74.1) than the old 10x model (104S). That
is a point which Pioneer should fix soon with a firmware upgrade, since the
74.1 score is not good. Last the drive refused to read both 90 and 99minutes
CDs :(
4. DVD Tests
Pioneer DVD-105S
IDE DVD ROM - Page 4
DVD Tests
- Test Method :
We used DVD Speed 99 v0.2 to run DVD tests (DMA enabled for both drives).
All tests done at least 3 times, took worst results, with same DVD title.
The DVD Speed author suggests avoiding using dual layer DVDs since the performance
might be lower than the actual one. For that propose we used a single-layered
DVD title, which taken from PC Magazine.
- DVD Speed results:
As you can see the Pioneer DVD-105S manages to deliver around
15.000kb/s and confirms the title of the faster DVD-Rom around. The seek times
for DVD reading are lower than the ones we got from the CD test and are better
than 104S model. The CPU usage is also very low.
- DVD Ripping Tests
Yes, we know what you might think: "We got our DVD-Rom, now we need
to make a DivX ;)
from it". So we need to rip the movie in our HD. Is there any difference
between the 2 models since the 105S supports 16x reading DVD-Rom speed? The
answer seems to be no. We tested both drives with the Matrix movie and with
DVD Decrypter v2.1. Below are the results when we ripped the whole movie:
As you can see both drives have similar average ripping speed.
The increased 16x DVD-Rom reading speed of DVD-105S doesn't seem to affect
the DVD ripping performance.
- Movie Tests :
We tested Pioneer DVD-104S with many DVDs and our total impression is pretty
good. When playing DVD movies average CPU Usage was 77% using Power DVD v3.0.
If you have a SVGA card with hardware acceleration and you enable it, the CPU
usage will drop nearly at 50%! We faced some problems when we enabled Hardware
Acceleration with Power DVD 3.0 and 6.49 & 7.17 nVidia Detonator drivers.
The picture appeared scrambled so we couldn't use the hardware acceleration.
Also don't forget to grab DVD
Genie, which will help you change regions for the software player. This
will not defeat the hardware region lock (which can be overcome with region-free
firmware).
5. Final Verdict
Pioneer DVD-104S
DVD ROM - Page 5
Final Verdict
|
Positive (+) :
|
Negative (-) :
|
|
- 16x DVD Reading speed
- CD Text Support
- Very good Data transfer times
- Good seek times
- Digital Output
- Flash Memory
- Lower noise compared with previous 104S model
|
- Region-locked in hardware (RPC2)
- Low DAE speed
- Bad CloneCD performance
- Still noisy enough
- Doesn't support 90 and 99min CDs
|
Overall, the Pioneer DVD-105S seems to be a successful successor to the
DVD-104S model. The data reading performance is very good, and seek times should
be good enough for most users. The DAE speed is low and seems to have problems.
CloneCD users will find this drive a bad choice due to its bad performance and
will possibly look elsewhere for a better solution. The DVD performance is very
good and will give you many hours of entertainment.
On a second thought, we have to admit that the worst points which displeased
us, are low DAE and CloneCD performance. If the drive performed better in those
two areas, it would be a must-buy! The hardware lock (RPC2) isn't really a negative
point, since there is a solution to overcome it. Finally, the drive is noticeably
less noisy than the previous 104S model, but is still noisy enough to make your
ears complain :)