DVD Drive Recommendation?

[Maggi]

Originally posted by HedsSpaz:
So, I think the general consensus here is to get a Pioneer drive if the primary use is DVD's and not CD's. So, I do believe that I'll be ordering the Pioneer DVD-105S.

If you can find one, try to get a DVD-A03, -103S or -113, since those are the last IDE drives from Pioneer that are region free ...

Cheers,
Maggi

[SteveC]

The 10X Pioneers - 104 and 114s I think just need to be reflashed with the cracked firmware to be RPC1...

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[HedsSpaz]

I already found a site that has a firmware crack for both the DVD-115 and the 105S, so I'm not to concerned about that.
http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/support/region.html

Ian

[uberlad]

Good choice on the Pioneer 8-)

Quick aside:

Has anyone seen a Pioneer 303S (SCSI 6x/32x) for sale anywhere that won't kill me on postage to the UK?

They dropped out of sight a couple of months ago and everyone I have so far asked has absolutely none.

Uberlad


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8 out of 10 women say they would feel no qualms about hitting a man.
5 out of 10 referred to me by name.

[Himself]

DentyCracker,

I use WinDVD2000, it has better 4.1 sound, (you can edit the registry to add LFE mixing) but PowerDVD 2.55 works well, both take up next to no cpu time. I got rid of my H+ when I bought the Duron cpu, Sigma Designs isn't interested in driver updates including 4.1 sound, so bye bye Sigma. Surprisingly, my V3 is quite capable of DVD playback at higher resolutions, I don't have to drop from 1280x1024 to watch a DVD.

[Gurm]

Hedzspaz:

Seriously, if you want to go SCSI mail me. I might have a couple of extra controllers laying around that would handle the throughput of a DVD drive.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[DentyCracker]

I think i'll go get WinDVD2000 then. I'm also thinking of getting a cheap but good 60 watt mono amp and a Klipsch Satellite to do centre channel duties so I can take advantage of 5.1 sound

[xortam]

Hedzspaz ... why are you even concerned about region locking living in the U.S.? That said, I have the Pioneer 303S but the region free feature isn't what sold me on this drive. The slot loading is very convenient. The loading is a bit noisy but the 120mm fans help drown the noise.

AFA SCSI controllers ... Adaptec makes fine hardware which is widely supported but its way too expensive. You should check out other vendors for much better price/performance. I really like my Mylex (IBM) RAID controller. Its supported on all Win platforms, Linux, OS/2, NetWare, etc. It cost a fraction of what Adaptec would charge.

[HedsSpaz]

Hedzspaz ... why are you even concerned about region locking living in the U.S.?

I think mostly it's more of an anti-MPAA sentiment then any practical reason. I just think that it's stupid that the MPAA did this and circumventing their silly protection is sort of a small personal way of sending a silent 'screw you' in their general direction.

AFA SCSI controllers ... Adaptec makes fine hardware which is widely supported but its way too expensive. You should check out other vendors for much better price/performance. I really like my Mylex (IBM) RAID controller. Its supported on all Win platforms, Linux, OS/2, NetWare, etc. It cost a fraction of what Adaptec would charge.

I saw Mylex listed and took a look at their products, but there were two problems: first, all of the controllers that I saw listed were RAID, which while that would be very nice, I don't need it. Second, they were all prohibitively expensive, the cheapest one was 390$ some while the Adaptec 19160 is only 185$ and the 29160 is 199$.(white box)

Now you say that your card cost a fraction of the cost of an Adaptec card, so, either you're comparing it to a different card than the one I am, or Mwave just doesn't carry any of the low end Mylex cards.

Anyway, for the moment I decided to stick with IDE and I've already ordered a Pioneer DVD-105S. Should be here on Friday, just have to hope that there will be someone at home to sign for the package(stupid FedEx grumble bitch moan complain...)

So, now it's time to go order some DVD's. Gotta love the Anime threads in TSB.

Anyway, thanks a lot for all the advice everyone.

Ian

[kkfong]

I am also looking for DVD drive...

1) SCSI
2) SPDIF out (or whatever connector that'll get me 5.1 output). I have SB Live! mp3+ 5.1
3) internal
4) RPC1/non-region lock

Which Pioneer/Toshiba drive will fit the above requirement?

BTW, I have a Yamaha 8824S internal CD burner as well. And I don't really care too much about speed. I come from a 486/66 world 2 weeks ago. I can live with slow equipment

Thanks

[thecurse]

as recomended by many others here about 1 yr ago i went with pioneer and do not have any regrets. pioneer dvd-303 scsi slot loading brown box not a single problem. lets see if i remember it right i had just gotten my g400max then i bought a sailor moon dvd for my wife to watch and about a month after that i got the pioneer dvd drive.

[uberlad]

kkfong,

I reckon the 303S is the Pioneer to get for your needs, if you can find any still on sale that is. They pretty much dropped out of sight about 6 weeks ago, and I've not been able to get my hands on one.

Please update me if you can find one on sale online.

Otherwise you'll have to get the new 10X SCSI drive and hope someone releases a hacked BIOS for it to make it RPC-1

Uberlad

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8 out of 10 women say they would feel no qualms about hitting a man.
5 out of 10 referred to me by name.

[Gurm]

kkfong:

I'll sell ya my Toshiba 1201B. I'm always looking for an excuse to buy better hardware (lusting after a Plextor CD-only drive).

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[WayneHu]

Pioneer 10x doesn't seem to like some CD-R , CD-RW media, even some low quality CD... And it is quite loud. Like airplane's engine... It is not good to have such loud noise during movie playback.

I have heard that most of Toshiba's DVD-ROM are very quiet. I have a SM-1212, and it is so. Moreover, I seldom meet incompatible CD-R media problem with it. But it also has some short points. It only reads CD-RW media at 8x speed. It doesn't supoort to read sub-channel code. The third one is slow audio extraction speed and no jitter-correction function.

Since I also have a Plex40, these short points are compensated by it. If we want a good CD reader to generate the accurate source image, a good CD-ROM is still the way to go! It is hard for a DVD-ROM to beat CD-ROM when reading CD-R and CD-RW media...

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PIII-550E@733/1.65v, P3B-F, G400DH/32MB@140/186

[This message has been edited by WayneHu (edited 25 October 2000).]

[Wombat]

I have my Pioneer 10x. I haven't had any trouble with media, but I haven't used much low-quality stuff.
About the noise: I agree that is noisy when it is just reading CD data at full clip (so is just about anything running higher than 24x), but it doesn't make much noise when it adjusts its speed for DVD's, and it is very nearly silent when it is used to play music CD's.