Any reason why you didn't test doing a full-disc DVD write? It's very rare I write a DVD that isn't going to be pretty much full - it would be nice to know whether the Pioneer's claimed performance means anything useful.

Given that Pioneer gave claim to a heightened transfer speed once you got further to the edge of the disc, why did you not test this??

I can practically count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times I've put less than 4gig onto a DVD, so for me, testing 1gig is a bit odd....

The article is misleading. A 1xDVD spins just three times faster than a 1xCD. The higher data density of DVDs accounts for the factor of ten figure quoted.

So, a 16xDVD spins at the same speed as a 48xCD. Pushing out to 20xDVD is much like the CD people pushing out to 60x. The limiting factor is the physical strength of the media. The faster you spin, the bigger the chance that the whole disc will just fly apart. Polycarbonate shards are not nice; are you feeling lucky! Pioneer's proprietary technology to spin faster could be stronger discs or better public liability lawyers. I'll take the safety clothing either way.

Sorry, I can't believe a Tech hardware reporter doesn't understand CAV on DVD writing and really believed that a 20x DVD writter would be 25% faster than a 16X speed writer!!!

FAIL!

Has anyone ever got DVD-RAMs to work with Windows without third party software? I always use Nero in-CD

As others have noted, this article is a little misleading.

Firstly the limit in speed is due to the physical limits of the spinning discs; it's not going to be any different to CD given the manufacturing processes, materials and dimensions are near identical. As James says, a 16x DVD = 48x CD (in terms of spindle speed) and a 20x DVD = 60x CD - nowhere near the claimed 180x which would be impossible with standard discs.

Secondly, and far more importantly, less than 25% of the disc was written to - Pioneer even commented on this result and yet you failed to re-test with 4GB or so to fill the disc.

The result of this is that you cannot form a proper conclusion until proper empirical testing has been carried out.

El Reg normally have such consistently good reviews and news, I feel somewhat let-down in this instance - perhaps you can (and should) re-test with 4GB of data to the disc?

... after I got my fingers burned with a (not quite) all singing and dancing drive from another manufacturer - that this drive returns the Index when playing audio CD's?

Far more important than speed is the number of errors that are on disc after writing. Error concealing mechanisms do a good job of hiding most problems but once a disc decays or gets mucky, if the correction code is already working hard, then it's going to fail with a hard error.

And why on gods earth are these things still being made with IDE connectivity? I've not built a system for an age with anything IDE in it :/

would be good, especially as SATA burners have come down to near equivalent IDE burner prices.

Comparison of SATA vs IDE drives with otherwise identical specs and SATA vs SATA etc.

Thanks.

Any chance of the reviewer learning a bit about DVD writing before testing a DVD writer?

And shortly dropped back to 48. A CD disintegrating at 54x is like a hand grenade. It totally demolishes the drive and sometimes the machine. A 20x single read/write head speed on DVD should use similar rotational speeds. Hand-grenade in my case redux?

Disclaimer - I am old enough to have witnessed what happens when an idiot operator tries to pull the spindle on one of those ancient Vax 5MB drives with changeable disks without stopping the disk first. The holes in the door of the computer rooms and the shards sticking out of the wall on the side of the corridor were not a pretty sight...

Why DVD-RAM never caught on? Easy -- the format has nothing else in common with DVD other than those three letters. DVD-RAM is recorded totally different at all levels and a disc does not resemble a DVD-ROM disc at all. That may be fine for archiving but not for sharing.