It seems as if history is repeating itself and we are seeing the same constant speed upgrades on DVD-ROM drvies as we did on CD-ROM drives in the past years.

Pioneer today announced that the company is now shipping its DVD-303S, the industry’s first and only 6x DVD-ROM drive with a SCSI interface. The drive also supports 32x CD-ROM speed for enhanced backward compatibility.

“As market demand for DVD increases, computer and tower manufacturers have turned to Pioneer for a high-performance solution to integrate into their products,” said Paul Dempsey, senior vice president, sales and marketing, Pioneer New Media Technologies. “As the only SCSI DVD-ROM available, the DVD-303S fits the criteria that ATAPI/IDE drives can’t. This drive fills a void other DVD-ROM drive manufacturers have ignored.”

The drive features a new slot-load disc mechanism complete with a chucking system for safer disc handling. Slot-load enables both horizontal and vertical
mounting for added flexibility and is ideal for the requirements of the market. The mechanism grips the disc by both edges without touching the data surfaces and operates gently to eliminate any risk of damage. In addition, ejected discs are held in the slot with the central hole accessible to allow the discs to be removed without leaving fingerprints on the data surfaces.

The new drive is also available in an ATAPI interface with either a slot-load or tray load option. ATAPI drives support PIO mode 4, DMA multi-word mode 2 and Ultra DMA 33.