After many months of good performance my Pioneer A06 seems to have given up on life. I had several failed burns with Ritek 4x +R media yesterday (media which has worked fine till now). I tried doing a 2.4 burn with my old Phillips 228 and it burned fine. I have checked the burned media with DVDInfoPro and the basic error test passed fine. Putting this media in the Pioneer results in the drive not even being able to detect the media! A media test in DVDInfoPro also fails when the medi is in this drive.

Has anyone else experienced this strange behaiviour with the A06? Time to invest in a new drive? I also heard that burnt media wiith this drive suffers from "decay" - I have had a few discs which appear to suffer from this problem.

i would try using the latest available firmware, there is also the chance that your drive just failed...

(in reply to DVD Maniac)

I had the latest Rip lock hacked firmware on it for months now and it was working fine till recently. I think the drive has just died.

Using the site reviews, I have decided to splash out on some new drives to replace this broken one and my ageing Phillips 228. I have gone for an NEC 3500 and a Pinoneer A08 to cover my bases. DVD recording quality is the most important feature for my requirements.

I have tried DVDInfoPro to test some previously recorded media and have a few questions (sorry but I am not familiar with this piece of software yet).

1. Why will it not run the PI/PO test for the NEC 3500? Can this be corrected by using one of the hacked firmwares?
2. I read that the PI/PO test is more reliable (ie a better indication of burn quality) than the stabdard CRC read error test - is this true?
3. Will the PI / PO test work with the Pioneer A08 when I get it?
4. What PI/PO values should I be looking for to indicate a "good" quality burn

Thanks in advance!

(in reply to emperor)

1. NEC drives are not yet supported by DVDInfoPro, until NEC support it with firmware upgrade (we all hope so!)
2. No that's not true, there are many cases, where the disc has low PI/PIF error rates but is not readable and the other way, using both PI/PIF and a CDSpeed graph test will show if the burn is OK
3. Yes it works
4. Check the writing quality forum

(in reply to DVD Maniac)

I just did a Pi/PO test with my new A08 with a known failed burn from my old A06 (presumed broken).

Yukk!

The test appears to support the playback experience, more and more error correction going on with the player as playnack continues until it eventually crashes completely. Anyone else seen this profile? Does it indicate a burner on the brink of breaking completely?

(in reply to emperor)