TYG02 Test Burn


From these test burns you can clearly see the speed changes and this time the NEC has the edge by 18 seconds but how does the burn quality compare?

Burn Quality of the burns carried out above


The NU drive used to read this media locked up the PC shortly after this screen grab so a full scan could not be carried out

From these tests we can clearly see the sudden increase in PI errors as the NEC burn speeds up 12x speed as well as the % increase in jitter at the same point. With the Pioneer however the errors do increase towards the edge of the disc but the speed transitions are much smoother and the peak is considerably lower. These errors are well within acceptable limits and both burns are considered to be good.
The NU drive I used for these tests is very fussy over media and in fact will not read FAKE TYG02 media under any circumstances so the locking up during the reading is down to the drive and not necessary the media in question.

Readability of the media
Pioneer

NEC


Very little to chose from here the NEC burn is better at the beginning which is the 6x burn but the overhaul scans are very similar, with the NEC burn having the edge on the speed of the read by 31 seconds
Now that DATA test burns have been completed I tried the drives with burning a title set from my hard drive

The Pioneer took 7:40secs to complete the burn at 12x speed
The NEC took 7:10secs to complete the burn at 12x speed

Both films played flawlessly in my fussy Mustek player and are compatible with my other players
So at 12x speed burning the NEC is 30 seconds faster which compares with the burning speed tests

Taking into account the increase in jitter and PI errors with the NEC at 12x speed which could produce playback problems with some older DVD players I have to give the Pioneer the edge with this test

The next test is to compare the 8x speed burning capabilities of the two drives with DVD+R media and for this test I am using the only 8x speed media I have currently available which is Bulkpaq PRODISCR03 8x speed DVD+R

PRODISCR03 8x speed DVD+R Test Burn



Now this is interesting we can clearly see that the Pioneer starts at 6x speed reaches 8x early in the burn and sustains it until the end of the burn, whereas the NEC starts at 4x speed, increases to 6x speed at about 800meg and then drops down to 4x at the 2gig point and continues at this speed to the end.
The Pioneer takes the lead here by 5:16secs but how do the burns compare?

Burn Quality



This time both scans are excellent with the NEC at almost zero PI errors during the 4x burning, but you can clearly see the slight increase in errors and % jitter at the 6x speed burning area.

Taking into account the reduced speed of the NEC burning, the better graph is offset by this and the Pioneer graph is still very good so I have to give Pioneer the thumbs up here

PIONEER

NEC

Both drives produced a burn that was perfectly readable so we have to say they are equal in this respect

Now that DATA test burns have been completed I tried the drives with burning a title set from my hard drive

The Pioneer took 8:22secs to complete the burn at 8x speed
The NEC took 15:02secs to complete the burn at the attempted 8x speed

Both drives produced excellent burns with this media which worked OK in my DVD players
Neither of the drives had the DVD-ROM bitsetting ability so the deciding factor here is the actual burning speed which the Pioneer wins HANDS DOWN

CMC Magnetics 80 mins CDR Test Burn Burnt at the maximum burning speed


Here you can see the two different burning patterns with the Pioneer burning Z-CLV and the NEC CAV
The pioneer started slower than the NEC and only rose to 33x at the end when the NEC finished a at an impressive 48x. The NEC is faster by just over 1 minute at burning CDR

Now that they have burnt in super fast speed. How do they read?

PIONEER

NEC

Graphs speed are almost identical so if you need to burn CDR's super fast in your high speed DVD burner the NEC is the winner

OVER BURNING TEST

The NEC rejected any parameters above 89:57.74
The Pioneer could not accept any figure above 99:57.74

Pioneer

NEC

Both drives accepted the overburning beyond the limits set so I was not able to fully check the maximum overburning capabilities but they both definitely support overburning and if the limits are anything to go by the NEC is 89:57.74 and the Pioneer 99:57.74 giving the pioneer a good lead here.
I am unsure as to the reason for the limits on the maximum settings for the test but I have a feeling that it may be a bug in the CD Speed software

Disappointing results here it looks as if Pioneer have not included this media in their 16x speed tables and will only burn at the maximum of 4x speed

Pioneer Test Burn at the maximum 4x speed to this DVD+R media

NEC Test Burn at 16X to this DVD+R Media

Sad state of affairs here when the Pioneer with official firmware will only burn this media at 4x speed maximum when other 8x speed drives will burn it at their maximum of 8x speed! The NEC wins hands down here simply because it will burn at 16x speed in an impressive 6:10secs when the Pioneer took twice as long.

Here is a test at 16x speed with the Pioneer and DVD-R media

These results show the different ways that the drives burn at 16X speed.
The Pioneer burning at 6-16x Z-CLV (10.15X average) and the NEC burning at 7-16 CAV (11.41 average) this gives the lead to NEC by 54 seconds in this test but I will reserve final judgement until I am able to burn the same media on both drives at 16X speed and compare the quality.

UPDATE


I have upgraded the Pioneer to firmware 1.14 and here you can see the different burning pattern with a decrease in burning time of 20 seconds but still 34 seconds longer than the NEC

Pioneer DVR-108 Burn Quality


The Pioneer 4X speed scans are good showing a minor gradual increase peaking at 28 PIF at the edge of the disc and taking into account that this is prototype media I would say this is down to the media rather than the drive Jitter, PIE, PIF are all good

NEC ND-3500AG Burn Quality

Here you can see a good start to the scan but with a miserable increase in PIE errors as the burn speeds up past the 2.5gig point which is just above the 12x speed burn, Jitter also increases here and reaches an unacceptable 17.4%.
I have come to accept 10%-15% jitter as the norm, below 10% is v good and above 15% is poor although it does not appear to reflect on the readability or playability of the media

Pioneer DVR-108 Readability

NEC ND-3500AG Readability

From these two graphs you can clearly see the NEC drive being easier to read but also you can see the drop in quality with the NEC after the 12x speed burn and although both graphs are diferant reflecting on how the drives burn the media both discs can be read satisfactory and the NEC burn is a lot faster to read by 2:11secs

UNTIL I AM ABLE TO TEST BOTH DRIVES AT 16X SPEED WITH THE SAME MEDIA I HAVE TO RESERVE MY JUDGEMENT

As both these drives recognised the media as 4x speed maximum I burnt a test DVD-Video global image to a disc in each of the drives both discs completed the burning process satisfactorily but the burning times were slightly different

The Pioneer took 5:13secs whilst the NEC too 4:57 secs taking the lead by 16 seconds

The NU drive I normally use to test the media failed to recognise the discs so I carried out both scans in my Liteon DVD-ROM drive as well as the BTC DVDR drive

Burn Quality tests from Liteon DVD-ROM

Both these scans are very similar showing a steady rise to the outer edge and although these readings are good it does give cause for concern if the same dye formulation is used with full-size media. The graph would soon rise above an acceptable level. This occurring with both drives leads me to suspect that in this case the media is the cause of this problem

Burn Quality tests from BTC DVDR

The Disc Quality scans in the DVDR drive were better with hardly any errors at all showing that DVD burners are capable of reading discs and correcting errors a lot better than DVD-ROM drives. With this test the NEC is marginally better than the Pioneer but both drives produce good burns with this media. Playback of the DVD-Video was good in the players I have that are capable of playing MINI DVD. I will be carrying out further testing of these MINI DVD's in another review

If you are just going to burn the MINI DVD's then there is nothing to chose between the drives