|
 |
|
Is a PowerBook G3 powerful enough to make full use of a DVD burner? The answer is an unqualified ‘Yes’, even if you have to make a few compromises. Pioneer drives, of course, are well-known for providing the guts of Apple’s ‘SuperDrives’. However, Apple hobbles their internal SuperDrives, and G4 and G5 desktop users in particular frequently order their Power Macs or PowerBooks sans SuperDrive and add their own internal or FireWire DVD burner. The PowerBook And that’s what we’ve done here. With PowerBook SuperDrives limited to miserable 2x writing speeds (despite the convenience), and similarly-antique CDR/CDRW burn speeds, a FireWire drive may be the way to go. Despite recently revamping my Lombard 400 PowerBook, I’m not planning on it being my main workhorse for that much longer – I’m waiting for that PowerBook G5. However, buying an 8x burner now is a bit of future proofing. The Lombard comes with some built-in limitations: no DVD playback in OS X (except with VideoLanClient (VLC), The Lombard’s MPEG-2 hardware decoder isn’t supported by OS X. However, all is well in OS 9. The Burner Pioneer’s DVR-107D came as an OEM drive with the black faceplate and Windows-only movie-making software. It’s been very popular and has been in short supply in some places. It cost $215 and I put it in a plain-vanilla Oxford 911 FireWire 5.25” enclosure, which cost $69. As ever, the Joy of Mac is plug. Play. Boom. Start burning inside 60 seconds. No drivers to install. The 107 is a dual-format writer which supports DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/+RW, but not DVD-RAM, which some of its 8x rivals, such as LG, have implemented support for. It also writes CDR and CDRW at 24x. It also reads CDs at a maximum of 40x. The writer came with firmware 1.09 installed (at time of writing, 1.10 was available, which can be installed only via a PC). Hacks have also been released which alter the firmware so the drive is region-free and rips DVDs at up to 12x, instead of the 2x the burner is limited to. The Software Roxio’s Toast supports the 107 all the way back to version 4.1.2. Toast 5.1.2 adds burn-proof support for the 107. I have no experience with Toast 6, but all the maintenance updates are rolled into it. Make sure you update Toast 5 all the way up to 5.2.3. The reason we’re not running 6 here is because this Lombard is running the obsolete OS X 10.1.5. But that in itself produces a few surprises. Like what? Like Disc Burner support for the 107. So CD Session burner works, but not iTunes or iPhoto burning (although modified plug-ins will inevitably appear). Disc Burner and Disc will recognize and support DVD-R/RW discs, but not +R/+RW. I wasn’t able to source any 8x media (still thin on the ground at this stage), but the burner was tested with 4x DVD-R/+R/-RW/+RW discs, as well as a some 2x DVD-RW media. 4x speeds amount to roughly 5.5MB/ps, which the Lombard handles easily, although I doubt whether it could sustain the over 11MB/ps demanded by 8x media. At 4x, a full 4.3GB takes around 14 minutes, give or take. At 2x, the drive took approximately 25 minutes. Assuming you’re using a Mac with fast enough throughput on the FireWire bus and a fast data bus (for example 2001 iBook or later; PowerBook 550/667 or better), 8x will be no trouble at all. The iceBooks all have faster FireWire chipsets than the early TiBook G4s and, if memory serves, only the 550/667, released late in 2001, got the better FireWire chipsets which the iBook had months earlier. It’s also important to note that Toast, which supports both -/+ formats, only supports BurnProof on –R/-RW media. However, I had no problems burning +R/+RW media at 4x. Equally, the Pioneer turned in an impressive CDR/CDRW burning performance, producing discs in under 4 minutes. Ripping audio CDs and copying data CDs was also very fast, with a full audio CD ripped to AIFF in around 3 minutes. I also tested commercial DVD ripping and burning in OS 9/OS X. For this test, I used a region 2 and 4 Macrovision/CSS-encrypted promotional DVD [not retail] I own. Copying or imaging the disc using OS 9 and OS X applications proved equally successful and, combined with Toast, the drive produced flawless DVD copies. Ripping a 4.3GB DVD took around 15 minutes. Burnt to DVD+RW, DVD-R and DVD-RW, the DVD worked faultlessly in a plain-jane cheap Teac DVD player., as well as in Apple DVD Player (v. 1.3) in OS 9. For this test, I also used the cheapest DVD-R media I could find (4x speed), and it posed no problems (although longevity may be an issue at some stage). If you make home or prosumer movies, the G3 processor can fall short; if your Mac is a G4 or better, you can encode to MPEG-2 fairly close to real time. By contrast, G3 MPEG-2 encoding is very slow; frankly, human beings don’t live that long. An hour or two of video could take days. As a consequence, I don’t recommend you encode anything but short DVD movies on the G3. Another limitation is the fact that Apple prevents iDVD from launching on the G3, although DVD Studio Pro works. Again, the limitation of the G3’s MPEG-2 abilities rears its head. I tested Studio Pro with a couple of short movies and it worked fine, although obviously Toast was needed to burn the projects, as Studio Pro (at least version 1.5) only supports internal Apple SuperDrives. The bottom line The DVR-107 makes an excellent portable addition to your PowerBook or iBook, which you can hook up to any FireWire-equipped Mac. It performed faultlessly in this test and there were no problems with either OS X or OS 9. To make full use of it, however, you’ll need a copy of Roxio’s Toast 5 or 6, as Apple’s –R/RW support is very basic, and you’ll have no iTunes to use with it (yet). As an alternative, you could buy the superseded DVR-106, although the 16x/10x CDR/CDRW burn speeds are yesterday’s news, while the 4x speeds will leave your burner looking slow in coming months as manufacturers jump to 12x and 16x speeds. It’s also a good buy for a G3/G4 iBook, or any PowerBook G4 without an internal SuperDrive. If you buy a case or a retail version which combines FireWire with USB 2.0, you can use the drive with any PC notebook or desktop as well – if you’re that way inclined. Further reading: xlr8yourmac has a number of user reports of DVD drives with Pismos and Wallstreets, and many TiBook reports (none with Lombard) in their FireWire section. CDR-Info has recently published an extensive test of the DVR-107 with a PC, and compared it with Sony and Plextor drives. Much of it is relevant.
| |||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
