Neowin.net

New DVR-A06 burner adds support for DVD+RW.

Pioneer is leading a radical shift in the optical storage market, broadening its support for DVD rewritable standards, with consumers coming out the winner.

The company's sixth-generation rewritable DVD drive, the DVR-AO6 makes its debut this week with support for both the "dash" and "plus" DVD formats. That is, it will handle the DVD Forum standard format DVD-R and DVD-RW discs, as well as +R and +RW discs.

Scheduled to ship in June priced at $329, the DVR-A06 marks a change in direction for Pioneer, one of the top makers of DVD burners. Until now, the vendor has been a staunch advocate of the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats. With this release, Pioneer aims to widen its appeal to prospective DVD users who are otherwise mystified by the cacophony of competing--and incompatible--DVD formats of recent years.

Like Pioneer's A05, the A06's software bundle will include Pinnacle InstantWrite packet-writing software, which provides the Quick Format utility as well as Quick Grow, which enables you to use a DVD-RW disc as if it were a multisession CD.

The DVR-A06's specs generally compare favorably to those of Sony's competing DRU-510A; Sony was the first company to market with a dual-format DVD burner last fall. The DVR-A06 features 4X write-once speeds for both DVD-R and DVD+R, and 2X DVD-RW write speeds. However, it lags slightly on its support for DVD+RW (2.4X, compared with the Sony's 4X +RW) and CD-RW (16X/10X CD-/RW compared with Sony's 24X/12X).

News source: pcworld.com

Here are hardware specifications of the product:

• 3Dlabs VP500SE visual processing unit (this is a bit redesigned version of 3Dlabs P10 VPU);
  
• 128-bit memory interface in contrast to 256-bit memory interface of higher-end professional graphics cards on the same VPU;
  
• 64MB DDR SDRAM memory;
  
• 370MHz RAMDAC;
  
• AGP 2x/4x with sideband support;
  
• D-Sub, DVI-A/DVI-D connectors;
  
• Supports dual-head operation for displays;

It is a bit surprising that the Graphics Blaster Picture Perfect does not provide TV-Out, a feature used by quite a lot of users; looks like Creative fully positions its Graphics Blaster Picture Perfect as a solution for those, who love to edit the pictures taken with a digital camera, not for people, who watch films or play computer games on TV-screen.