Vivastar RS-111 DVD Writer


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What is the DVD Write speeds? CAV, CLV, PCAV, ZCLV. Read our DVD Writer colum explanation.

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Vivastar RS-111


OEM:
Panasonic
Chipset:N/A
CDR
CDRW
1xDVD-R CLV
DVD-RW
DVD-RDL
DVD+R
DVD+RW
DVD+RDL
2xDVD-RAM ZCLV
BD-R
BD-RE
BD-R DL
BD-RE DL
HDDVD-R
HDDVD-RW
HDDVD-RDL
HDDVD-RWDL
HDDVD-RAM
24xCD
6xDVD
BDROM
HDDVD
EIDE, 2MB
More info
$150 6.9/10
9 votes
Read 12
comments

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DVD Media comments for this DVD Writer (click on the link to read the comments):
1 Princo 1xDVD-R (PRINCO......) comments, 0 good, 0 mixed, 0 poor.
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Comments
12 comments, Showing 1 to 12 comments
 - 

I got this unit as a present at Christmas time.
I agree with other posters in that the bundled software is rubbish. The writing software used to lock up my computer after burning 3/4 of the disc.
If you run Nero as burning software you should have no problems with the unit although you need a very recent version of Nero. Earlier versions wouldn't burn DVD films properly(I now use 5.5.10.20).
Nero detects this unit on my PC as a 'Matshita DVD-RAM'.

I have used a lot of different cheap DVD-R media and have never had any problems with it once I started using a recent version of Nero with DVDShrink as a ripper(Hail the mighty DVDShrink author for he is indeed great).
All DVD's I have ripped have played perfectly on my Modded Pioneer DV-444-S, my Mum's JVC DVD player and my old Cyberhome DVD player.

Strangely enough the company website disappeared. Don't know if this is a sign that they have gone out of business though.


O/S Windows 98 - Athlon 2200XP
Takes about an hour to do a full DVD burn


Comments posted by Danny from Other, July 01, 2003. Rated this writer 8 of 10.





See my other comments under Ticktanium

Ok The problems will begin if you install the software that comes with the product or if you install the software from Panasonic. Might be something with the VIA chipset or something else but once I added the drivers my network copying times (4GIG) went from typical 10 mins to 120 mins. This is not acceptible.

I have found that the best thing to do is not bother with the lousy software that comes with the drive and just install Nero. You can buy a copy anywhere for around 10.00 and upgrade it to the latest version. This works great and I have no drive copy or network delays like previously.

The only way I was able to return the performance back to normal was to re-install the win 2000 pro software. I could not re-install the VIA 4 in 1 drivers nor unistall the DVD-RAM drivers and get back the performance loss.

Just say no to their software.


Comments posted by Tick from Other, April 15, 2003. Rated this writer No rating.





First it is a panasonic drive and supported under Nero indirectly. So if you have one dont panic over not having the copy software from vivastar as it was lousy anyway. Mine says its a Panasonic LF-D311 but I have heard of some calling it a Panasonic LF-D312.

Second use DVDXCOPY 1.4.1 to copy a movie. I believe version 1.4.1 has finally made DVDXCOPY a must buy. At 80.00 many places or cheaper with an online coupon it is worth it now and works great with this burner.

Third I have found that it is picky about the DVD-R media you use. Fos some reason Mine does not like primedisc. But this is ok because I have had great luck with ACCU disks which are cheaper and usually sold in bulk. Anywhwere from 70 cents to 1.25 usually depending on where you buy them.

I am 10 for 10 now since I found out this combination. Prior to the ACCU Vivastar combo It was a 30-70 split usually on the failure side.

As for DVD-RAM disks. Optodisc are great and work on Both the Panasonic DMR-E10 personal DVD recorder and the VIVASTAR DVD-RAM recorder.

Unfortunately Vivastar appears to be out of buisness so I we dont have to tell everyone not to go out and buy this burner. Instead lets use this group to tell people what combinations work with this burner and what combinations to avoid.

ACCU & VIVASTAR RECORDER BURNS WORK ON THE FOLLOWING UNITS I OWN.
Sony NS-71P DVD Player.
Panasonic DMR-E10 DVD Recorder.
APEX 660 DVD Player. (If you Hit play before the movie starts it says not playable for this region.) Just put the movie in and let it work.
ALL MY HOME COMPUTER DVD Players. (Pioneer & Panasonic.)

Why did I give a 10 rating to a lousy DVD Recorder? Because it can work 100% if you use the right combination. Because of that it is doing what I expected it to do.


Comments posted by Ticktanium from Other, March 04, 2003. Rated this writer 10 of 10.





bought for £149.99 pc world comes with 5 blank dvd-rs, piece of cake to fit. first project to try was backing up a dvd9 (>4.7gb) titanic in this case (actual size 7.2gb no special features) used dvd-decrypter to rip and dvd2one to do its thing (it must employ some form of compression technique)ripping took 35mins on my p3 800mhz dvd2one processing took about 40 mins and used nero to burn which took about an hour. played in my logix dvd standalone quality is superb, quite new to this so need to experiment with other media and try different projects. First impressions very good allbeit a bit slow, good first entry level writer but ask yourself the question what do you expect for 150 quid??


Comments posted by hustler from Other, February 07, 2003. Rated this writer 8 of 10.





I brought this drive about 6mths ago £299 - no too bad. Was told it was one of the few dvd burners which used dvd-r disks. Its taken 6mths to find a program to back up dvds, have now found one which doesn't alter anything one the dvd except split it onto 2 disks (DVD X Copy).

I use Windows XP Pro, no drivers to install, ntfs system. I haven't loaded the software which came with burn - Nero does it. Takes about 20-50 mins to burn 4.7GB dvd-r disk.

Added bonus - have found somewhere to buy printable traxdata dvd-r disks in packs of 100 for about £80!

Over all, I'm really happy with it.


Comments posted by Mandy from Other, December 13, 2002. Rated this writer 8 of 10.





I purchased mine about a month ago for £50 yes 50!! my wife works for a supplier!! done me a good deal! or was it?

Drive installed on XP Pro with ease!! :)

have not been able to burn anything until yesterday! which dont sound to good!! but it was due to my error not the drive!!

But my DVD player pioneer 525 will not playback the created DVD i put this down to incompatible drive! but i checked!! will try different media!! but after reading things here im not sure if that will be wasting my money??


Comments posted by Andy from Other, November 19, 2002. Rated this writer No rating.





I got this DVD Writer for $250 - a $30 rebate I got from Vivastar about 2 mounth later.

It reads DVD and CD's good. I am running Windows XP. I did not load any driver for it or any programs that came with it. I order this DVD Writer 8/11/2002 and never burn any DVD with it till just Yesterday. It worked very good. I burned 2 DVD's with it. I used a $50 program called "Pinnacle Expression" it worked very good. I used my Video camera with fire wire to get the video. It put it to AVI. I could take out or put in or move any video clip! Time to burn the DVD. It says it Transcodes it. It was a 2 hour long Video. I have a PIII 1Ghz CPU. 12 hours to get to 39% then the % started to go fast and when it got to about 60% it went right to 100% Then it went to burn the DVD with my Vivastar RS-111. Expression was set to 1x burn speed. But it burn that DVD in about 40 minutes! A 2 hour DVD. It plays in the DVD players I have very good. It was a DVD-R disc. I found out I could put more on the DVD by having the Audio in MPG-2 about 51 more minutes. I add and edit the video more. Made the Video quality to 50% this time. The 1st time quality was about 42% I don't remember. I put the same Vivastar GP 4.7GB DVDR in it after the long 12 hours of transcoding it ejected the disk and said "Failed to complete disc burning. The disc may not be playable." It looked like it only burn about 5%. I used a Vivastar DVDR again. This time it worked. I guess it was just a bad ViVastar DVDR. I got them for $2.50 each.

This DVD Writer has been working very good for me! I would buy it again. But maybe look for one that can burn CD-R's to. But I all ready have my 2nd CD-writer in my computer so it works for me.

-Raymond Day


Comments posted by Raymond Day from Other, November 18, 2002. Rated this writer 9 of 10.





Yes folks although most ratings were negative and am waiting for stock on the new sony 3x writer i could get the retailbox of the vivastar (including 4 dvd-r discs) for only $99! I could not resist.
This is what happened. Setup testmachine: celeron 433, 6 gb hd (33), 396 mb ram, windows 98 se. Drive installed just fine. No read problems on cd,cdr, cd-rw, dvd-video, dvd,rom, dvd-r,dvd-ram. I bought a TDK dvd-ram disk dual sided 5.2 gb. formatted one side as iso, the other as udf. Then I copied a few 100 mb to the drive. No problems (yes a bit slow). Then I made 2 dvd-r discs, windows iso format and filled them up with divx movies. No read or write problems. I was quite happy because i can get de dvd-r from vivastar for only $12,50 (10 cakepack). Then I made a copy of a non protected dvd-video single layer disc (Fascinating nature region 2). Copy went alright although the buffer sometimes dropped to 10%. This should not be a problem because the drive has lossles linking buffer underrun protection. The disc played fine on the vivastar drive itself the i put it in my other machine (athlon xp 1800, windows XP, Pioneer dvd-rom 115f (region free bios flashed) and bummer: disc corrupted or format not supprted by windows xp! I tried to play it in my Pioneer 717 standalone: not working. The player recognized it as a dvd disc but said it could not be played. Next i tried it in another standalone player lenco 2a: no problem disc played like a charm! Lastly I tried another pioneer dvd-rom 103 (region free bios flashed) and presto also worked without problems.
Bottom line, I think this writer can offer real value for many. If you're not interested in speed you could try it. dvd-r compatability probably will depend on a lot of factors (dvd drive, firmaware, authoring tool, dvd-r disc brand). I noticed one problem with nero burning rom: when i ripped a movie with dvdecryptor Nero with only burn the iso to cdr which is a bit silly since it was 3,5 GB :-). Just mail me if you want to discus this drive or share experiences.


Comments posted by Godbluff from Other, October 08, 2002. Rated this writer 8 of 10.





This deck is a complete waste of money. I've tried this burner in three different computers and it simply will not burn dvd movies on DVD-R media. I've spent about a thousand additional dollars on hardware upgrades, various brands of DVD-R Media, and various brands of DVD authoring software packages, just trying to get this thing to function. Data and DVD-RAM functions work fine, but it will not burn a DVD movie. Vivastar does not support this product. They totally ignored my requests for tech support and will not issue an RMA number. I began a campaign of phone calls to their US office and after about two weeks of dealing with VERY RUDE receptionists, I finally spoke to their one and only tech. He told me to try several different things; none of which worked. They jerked me around until I was past the time when I could return the product for a refund (I purchased the unit from Tiger Direct who requires you to investigate every avenue of tech support from the Vendor before they will allow you to return anything. Their tech support was horrible also). I finally requested an RMA from Vivastar so that they could check out/repair the unit. I have been waiting over a month for a response that is obviously not coming. They will no longer accept my phone calls and will not respond to my emails. I finally purchased a Sony DVD+R/RW deck and the thing works great! This has been a VERY expensive lesson.


Comments posted by Phil Thon from Other, October 07, 2002. Rated this writer 1 of 10.





Slow but does the job with no problems


Comments posted by Mad Lemming from Other, September 17, 2002. Rated this writer 6 of 10.





I have had this unit for 6 months now and I am not able to get the DVD-R to play on my Sony home player. Also about every other DVD-R I do comes up with a buffer underun error! I can play back ok on PC when it writes without error. I have a brand new PC and am not having any luck getting this writer to be consistent. I would not recommend this unit.

JH


Comments posted by James from Other, September 13, 2002. Rated this writer 4 of 10.





I have just purchased this writer, and have not been able to try it due to the fact that the Vivistar Recording Software that was supplied with it stsed on the cover to be V1.0 and a serial number that applied to that version on the disk it said V1.0 when I was installing it showed that the version was V2.0.

Unfortunately the Software key provided is for V1.0 so it will not install..Despite emailing Vivastar twice during the last two days I have received no reply..

This tells me that the company does not care about its customers as such I will be returning the unit to the superstore from where I purchased it for a refund. Due to the inability to use the unit and the lack of support by the Vivastar the manufacturer.




Comments posted by Antonio Bonacci from Other, August 30, 2002. Rated this writer No rating.




12 comments, Showing 1 to 12 comments
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1 DVD Writer hits, Showing 1 to 1 DVD Writers
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Column Explanation:

Click on this for more technical information.

New comments= New comments since your last visit.
New Writer = New DVD Writer since your last vist.

OEM
Original Equipment Manufacturer.


Chipset

The manufacturer of the main chipset the DVD writer/recorder is based on.


Write support / Read support
DVD-R
= Works
DVD-R = Is not supported
DVD-R? = Not tested


Single Layer(4.7GB) write speeds
1x (CLV) = about 58 minutes
2x (CLV) = about 29 minutes
2.4x (CLV) = about 24 minutes
4x (CLV) = about 14.5 minutes
6x (CLV/ZCLV) = about 10-12 minutes
8x (PCAV/ZCLV) = about 8-10 minutes
12x (PCAV/ZCLV) = about 6.5-7.5 minutes
16x (CAV/ZCLV) = about 6-7 minutes

Dual/Double Layer(8.5GB) write speeds
1x CLV = about 105 minutes
2.4x CLV = about 44 minutes
4x CLV = about 27 minutes

Single Layer (4.7GB) read speeds
1x read speed is 1.321MB/s = ~56 minutes
6x CAV (avg. ~4x) read speed is max 7.93MB/s = ~14 minutes
8x CAV (avg. ~6x) read speed is max 10.57MB/s = ~10 minutes
12x CAV (avg. ~8x) read speed is max 15.85MB/s = ~7 minutes
16x CAV (avg. ~12x) read speed is max 21.13MB/s = ~5 minutes


DVD Write types
CAV = Constant Angular Velocity, the DVD is written at a constantly increasing speed.
CLV = Constant Linear Velocity, the DVD is written at a constant speed.
ZCLV = Zone Constant Linear Velocity, the DVD is divided into zones. After each zone the write speed is increased.
PCAV = Partial Constant Angular Velocity, the DVD is being written at an increasing speed until a certain speed. After this speed it will not increase anymore.


Connection
Desktop = Standalone desktop DVD Recorder
EIDE = Computer DVD Writer with EIDE/IDE connection
SCSI = Computer DVD Writer with SCSI connection
USB = Computer desktop DVD Writer with USB 2.0 or/and 1.1 connection
FireWire = Computer desktop DVD Writer with IEEE 1394/FireWire/i.Link connection (some standalone desktop dvd recorder supports this also but then it is usually to connect your DV camera to the recorder)


Rating
The first rating is based on a weighted rank (the true Bayesian), it requires at least 5 votes to get a weighted rating.
The second rating between the ( ) is a normal average rating.


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