Award-Winning Products Help Pioneer Corner the Market on DVD Recording

An award-winning line of DVD recorders is bringing Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. one step closer to its goal of becoming the global leader in DVD technology.

In the summer of 1998, before most of the public knew what DVD meant, Pioneer President Kaneo Ito announced a new vision for the company, which identified four business objectives to harness its heritage of superior optical and display technology. That vision included: establishing global leadership in DVD, achieving a successful business in next-generation display systems, securing a leadership role in Digital Home Networks, and continuing strategic development of key technologies and components. The company is on track with all of the goals laid out as part of the new vision.

Continuing its strong leadership in the DVD category, Pioneer has consistently used its engineering expertise to pursue product differentiation in all areas of DVD technology. As a result of high quality engineering and fuller, feature-rich product offerings, the company has become known as a DVD leader, gaining significant market share in an arena where competition is fierce.

"The holiday season was an absolute success, in part because of our strong foundation of DVD recording products in the market. This is a strong move forward towards Pioneer's goal of achieving twenty five percent market share globally for DVD recording,” said Tom Haga, president and chief operating officer for Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc.

For home recorders, Pioneer expects the mix of products in the market will be split fifty-fifty between hard drive based DVD recorders and non-hard drive recorders. With a wide range of products that couple hard drive and DVD recording, Pioneer will continue to succeed in the higher-end of the category. On the computer side, Pioneer will strive to maintain the top spot globally with a continued strong presence in both OEM and Pioneer branded computer drives at retail.

Optical disc technology has been at the forefront of Pioneer's research and development since the early 1980s when the company first introduced Laser Disc technology. Laser Disc evolved into DVD and Pioneer has continued to advance the technology and bring it into a large number of homes. Moving toward the near future, Pioneer will be pursuing the next level of recording, which includes: faster record speeds, dual layer recording, and high definition recording using Blu-ray technology.

Pioneer offers a range of DVD recorders for the home which include the following products:

The DVR-57H and DVR-810H-S are the world's first DVD recorders featuring the TiVo service. These new recorders offer consumers the control provided by the easy-to-use TiVo service integrated with advanced DVD recording for the option of short-term storage on a hard drive or long-term archival of broadcast programming from the hard drive onto DVD-R/DVD-RW discs. The DVR-57H comes equipped with a 120-gigabyte hard disc drive, while the DVR-810H offers an 80-gigabyte hard disc drive. Within the first four months of being on the market, the DVR-810H has received the following accolades: Popular Science Best of What's New Award 2004, PC World Next Gear Innovations Award 2004, CES Design and Engineering honoree, CNET “The 5 That Matter” List, TECH TV’s Top 20 list, and a 2004 Technology is a Girl's Best Friend honoree.

The DVR-510H-S with its 80-gigabyte hard disc drive, offers expanded capabilities including the ability to play back a DVD while recording onto the hard drive or to play programs from the hard drive while recording onto DVD. The hard drive also enables consumers to watch programs from the beginning while the recorder simultaneously finishes the recording. Content from the hard drive can also be transferred to a DVD for long-term storage. A one-hour program recorded in EP mode can be transferred to a 4x DVD-R disc in about 2 ½ minutes. Consumers can connect a DV Camcorder directly to the recorder utilizing the IEEE 1394 port on the front of the unit, making it a home movie makers dream. Unique to the DVR-510H is the ability to choose from nine graphical title menus for Video Mode recording, taking your home made DVD to the next level.

The DVR-310-S is a great entry-level DVD recorder for anyone interested in replacing an outdated VCR with simple one-button recording. This easy-to-use DVD recorder offers progressive scan playback as well as compressed audio playback of .mp3 and Windows Media Audio™ files.

Pioneer offers a range of computer DVD burners including multi-format internal and external drives, and a multi-format slim drive for lap top computers.

The DVR-A07 is the world's first 8x8 dual format writer, meaning it is capable of writing at 8x speed on DVD-R discs and +R discs that are designed for this recording speed. The new drive also records high-speed DVD-RW and +RW discs at up to 4x speed, and CD-R and CD-RW discs at up to 24x speed. By supporting the DVD Forum's DVD-R and DVD-RW disc formats as well as the +R and +RW formats, Pioneer is helping to eliminate format confusion, which has become a growing problem for potential buyers.

The DVR-SK12D is a slim, external multi format DVD/CD writer, for people on the go or with limited office space. The Pioneer DVR-SK12D enables high-speed recording of up to 2x write speed with high-speed DVD-R and DVD-RW discs, 2.4x write speed with high-speed +R and +RW media. It also records CD-R media at up to 16x speed and up to 10x speed with high-speed CD-RW discs.

The DVR-S606 offers recording in multiple formats as well as quick connection through a standard IEEE 1394 (Firewire) or USB 2.0 port. It also includes software to make it easy for users to import content, record and edit video, author DVDs, create digital photo albums or slide shows, play movies and test recorded DVDs. The DVR-S606 can sit vertically or horizontally next to the computer. This external writer enables high-speed recording of up to 4x write speed with high-speed DVD-R discs, 2x with high-speed DVD-RW discs, 4x with high-speed +R media, and 2.4x with +RW media.