Pioneer 303s... For the few, the proud, and the SCSI
Written: Apr 17 '00 (Updated Apr 17 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good Performance, Quiet, One of the few SCSI DVD-Roms, Slot-Loading Rules!!
Cons: A little pricey compared to IDE units with more performance
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| 7thChord's Full Review: Hi-Val DVD ROM |
Or rather The Few, The Proud, The Stubborn
I guarantee you if you ask a number of hardware techs they will tell you for DVD, you are better off sticking to IDE. The reason being software decoders have had a hard enough time dealing with current IDE drives, and for the few lonely SCSI DVD drives that exists trying to use a full software solution for viewing DVDs can be like ramming into a brick wall.
But things have progressed and that includes the DVD decoding software as well. PowerDVD and WinDVDs' recent versions are certainly more SCSI friendly than the past verions. So for those individuals with SCSI setups and stubborn enough to keep devices off the IDE ports, today there really only exist 2 good drives for DVD/CD-Rom (I'm excluding DVD-RAM options that are available for SCSI). The Pioneer 303s/Hi-Val HDVD6S-00R and the Toshiba SD-M1201. Not very many choices.
Pioneer's little Bone for SCSI
The drive is a Narrow Ultra SCSI-2 device, and installation was simple as SCSI installs go. Being an Ultra device and thus using active termination you should be able use the internal drive termintation without creating any term problems on a Narrow bus. I didn't experience any on mine using a Tekram DC390F controller. I set the configuration jumpers for my bus, moved some devices around to fit it into the 5.25" bay I wanted, and it was in the system ready to go. *Note* The drive should have configuration pin 8 jumpered. Do not remove it. If you load a DVD disc with it removed, you will forever lock the drive in RC-2 mode region-locked, and you will be unable to revert it back to RC-1 region-free without some serious firmware hacking. If the drive doesn't come with enough neat little green jumpers for your configuration needs (which is possible), just go buy some more regular jumpers, but leave the one on pin 8 alone.
CD
I wanted to make sure it could read a basic CD before diving into DVD. It had no problems there. Auto insert notification worked fine (if you like that kind of thing), and I went ahead and used it to install some software. I also tested the drive with a couple pure data CDs on CDSpeed99 (including some recordable CD media with pure data with no problems). Reaching speeds of 30x toward the outer parts of the discs, its performance is very close to the advertised 32x. It's better than some other 32x drives I've owned and read about. The read speed was also able to keep my IDE DMA 4x/4x/24x CD-RW's buffer at 100% through audio and data burns. So the speed of the drive is sufficient for all of my CD needs, and it now serves as my primary CD-Rom too. Even if your trying to keep an all SCSI setup, it's certainly not the best CD reader out there with drives such as Kenwood's true 52X SCSI model and Plextor's UltraPlex40 on the market, but it should meet your needs if you don't want to use a separate CD-Rom drive.
DVD
I can't complain about the DVD read speed either. DVDSpeed99 showed it was able to reach its advertised 6x toward the outer parts of DVD discs. This isn't really an issue for normal DVD movie viewing. It worked fine with double-sided DVD discs as well. I had an older DVD (98) movie disc I received free with a video card (I forget which card it came with), and the drive read it just fine.
How well the speeds compare with the Toshiba model I don't know. But I would wager they are right there with it if not better. The Toshiba model is a 5x/32x.
PowerDVD
With my 733 PIII, I don't think I should have to mess with hardware decoding card. I read some reviews for PowerDVD. I even found a review that used the 303s, and it recommended the PowerDVD over WinDVD even though picture had less quality in PowerDVD. So it is the only software decoder I own a full copy (I have not tried Win98's DVD player stuffed away in a cab file). I have tried the demo version of WinDVD 2000, and maybe the picture is a little better. But it was hard for me to notice, and I considered it a non-issue. I certainly didn't like not having as much zoom control over my picture, so I probably won't try the WinDVD 2000 full version. Anywise, The PowerDVD ver. 2.55 works extremely well with the drive, and you have a lot of control over the viewing picture. I had no skips or blips. So you should have no problems running this drive with PowerDVD full software decoding as long as you have enough processor power.
Other Aspects
Noise-
Being an exact copy of the IDE version with a different interface. It has the same pioneer technology that makes it one of the quietest CAV optical drives I've owned. In fact, it's so quiet to the point of being a little unnerving. I can't hear it spin up, which probably scared me the first time I stuck a CD in it. I guess there is a part of me that's just used to hearing that all too familiar hum. The only way I could was to put my ear next to it (glad nobody walked in when I was doing that). So normally the only indication of it working is the little indicator LED.
Slot Loading-
This has to be one of the scariest yet intriguing features of this drive. You look at it and think, "ok that's cool, but something about it says one day I'm gonna eat one of your favorite special edition DVDs, and you'll never see it again muhahaha". Ok, maybe that's borderline paranoia, because I haven't experienced any problems with it in the couple of months I've had it (that's not saying much). But I haven't read anything negative about it either. It's rather nice not having to push the eject button once to open and once to close for inserting a disc. You stick the disc about 3/4 the way in and a mechanism grabs the disc on edge and pulls it the rest of the way. When you eject a disc, the mechanism pops it out just far enough so can grab it by the spindle hole and edge without getting your fingerprints on the disc. There is actually a little felt or velvet sweep that wipes a disc everytime you insert it. This should actually keep more dust out of the internal optics. Really this all is neato, but if you're ever angry, I would have a cool down period before inserting a disc so as not to force one in so hard you damage the mechanism. Personally from what I've read and my little experience, I think you can trust a slot-loading drive. I've seen reviews and posts where people have used slot loaders for around a year and experienced no problems such as scratched discs, grooved discs, or discs just plain getting stuck. The only real downside I see is the inability to use odd shaped discs as they will not work in the drive.
Price -
Your certainly are not gaining anything in performance when going with the SCSI compared to a DMA enabled IDE drive. In fact, you can get the 10x/40x IDE Pioneer model for about the same price. But you are paying for a lack of demand here. Higher prices don't usually shock most SCSI users anywise, because one advantage SCSI has never offered is cost efficiency. So if you are looking to save resources by staying off the IDE ports, you'll probably overlook the slightly higher price.
I'm gonna give it a tentative 5 stars even with the price, because 1) kudos goes to pioneer for even offering a SCSI solution in a low demand market 2) I personally think it's the better of the two common SCSI DVD-Rom drives out there. It's a solid drive that performs as advertised with a few bells and whistles to make the buyer give a little grin. You can still get this drive with RC-1 region free firmware (firmware vers. 1.X). This is great for those people who are looking for a region free drive.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
7thChord
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Member: C.Lee Johnson
Location: Houston, TX
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 1 member
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