Pioneer DVD-103S Review

by William Henning
Editor, CPUReview
Copyright August 18, 1999
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Introduction

Limits are meant to be broken. Remember the 64k memory limit of eight bit micro's? (oops; I am dating myself...) The 640k limit of the original IBM PC's? The HD size limits? You think that people would learn...

At one time the 650Mb storage capacity seemed enormous; after all, floppies only held 1.44Mb (floppies are now TOTALLY obsolete & pretty useless). Today with "monster" hard drives (my latest hard drive is an 18.2Gb 7200rpm Western Digital screamer) the 650Mb CD seems quite paltry by comparison.

DVD's now are MUCH more interesting... 4.7Gb per layer per side; allowing over 18Gb of storage on a dual-layer double-sided DVD!

What you get

• DVD-Rom drive

You might say, "Huh?"... to which I would reply: What else do you expect to get with an OEM DVD-Rom drive? Although I admit a driver disk might have been useful for people needing DOS support.

Test System

• Soyo 5EHM Super 7 motherboard
• AMD K6-2 400 processor
• Canopus Spectra 2500 XingDVD
• WinFast S320ii PowerDVD
• Xentor 32 XingDVD
• Sniper 2 WinDVD
• Canopus Spectra 2500 AGP Riva TNT video card
• Acer PCI NE2000 compatible network card
• Western Digital Expert 18Gb 7200 rpm hard drive
• Pioneer 6X DVD-Rom drive
• SoundBlaster Live! Value (OEM)
• Northgate Omnikey Plus keyboard
• generic serial trackball
• KDS VS-195 19" monitor
• Windows 95 OSR 2.5
• Windows 98 SE

NEXT: Features

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