detail information

As always we're going to start our review by checking out the contents of the retail package Plextor Europe send to us. In the box of the PX-504A recorder we can find the following items:

• Plextor PX-504A drive
• Quick installation guide
• Warranty RMA procedure manual
• Warranty registration card
• Audio cables, IDE flat cables
• Mounting screws, emergency eject pin, extra jumper cap
• Plextor Software Package, containing;
  • Ahead Nero Burning Rom disc;
    • Nero Burning Rom v5.5
    • NeroMediaPlayer
    • InCD/Packet-Writing
    • UDF Reader
    • NeroBurnRights
  • Plextor PlexTools disc;
    • PlexTools v1.20
    • PX-504A Manual (in 16 languages)
  • Cyberlink PowerDVD XP 4.0 disc
  • Pinnacle Studio 8SE disc
• One blank 4.0x 4.7GB Verbatim DVD+R disc
• One blank 2.4x 4.7GB Verbatim DVD+RW disc

As always Plextor has put together an excellent package. In the European retail package (note that the American package differs from the European package) we can find the usual items that you'll need to install the drive into your computer. Plextor has included one 4.0x DVD+R disc and one 2.4x DVD+RW disc, both were manufactured by Verbatim.

When it comes to software Plextor has really put together a superb package. Not only have they included a full copy of their PlexTools software and Ahead's Nero Burning Rom software, they have also included a full copy of Cyberlink's PowerDVD and Pinnacle's Studio 8 software. We'll get back to the software packages later on this page of our review.

The manual of the Plextor drive can be found on the PlexTools disc and is very complete and in many different languages. Plextor has included a printed quick installation guide and a printed manual on how you should proceed when you have problems with your drive. For Europe, The Middle-East and Africa Plextor Europe offers a two year warranty on the drive as they do for all their new writer models.

The Drive:

The front of the Plextor PX-504A drive is a bit different than we're used from Plextor drives. On the front of the PX-504A drive we can find the Plextor logo (in full colour), the model number (PX-504A), a 'DVD+ReWriteable' logo, a 'DVD-ROM' logo and a 'High-Speed ReWriteable' logo. The tray of the drive has been fitted with a black plastic strip, which makes it look quite good:

On the front of the drive we of course also have our usual headphone jack, volume control, a busy/write LED, emergency eject hole and an eject button. The back of the Plextor drive is the same as any normal CD-writer. On the back we can find the usual IDE and power connectors, the Master/Slave/Cable Select jumpers and the audio output connectors. On the back of the drive we can also see a square cut-out where it looks like a fan could have been fitted. We're however not sure about this.

One thing that we should also mention about the Plextor PX-504A drive is that the drive itself is based on the NEC ND-1100A DVD-writer. You can hardly tell this but on the label on the PX-504A drive itself we can see that the FCC ID mentions the ND-1100A model.

Software:

Plextor's PlexTools is well known program and is delivered with European Plextor CD/DVD-recorders. The program has come a long way since its first introduction and now offers some advanced features such as 'DAE Error Recovery' and advanced settings to control your Plextor drive with, such as 'Enable Single Session', 'Hide CD-R Media' and 'Disable PoweRec'.

As briefly mentioned when we listed the package contents, this European Plextor drive includes Nero Burning Rom v5.5 which doesn't really need an introduction. Nero Burning Rom, by many people, is considered to be one of the best software packages around when it comes to your CD/DVD burning needs.

Of course Ahead's InCD is also located on the Nero 5.5 CD-ROM. InCD is Ahead's packet writing software to use with your ReWriteable discs. With this software you can format a CD-RW or DVD±RW disc and use it as a large floppy disc. InCD also supports the 'Mount Rainier' (CD-MRW) format.

A full copy of CyberLink's PowerDVD XP 4.0 is also included in the Plextor's software package. With PowerDVD you can (of course) play DVD movies on your computer using a feature-rich navigation control.

Pinnacle Studio version 8 is a video-editing software for your computer. Simply capture your video footage and then use the professional editing features like scene transitions, title effects, and fast/slow motion to create compelling movies. After you've edited your video, you can output to tape or burn your movies to a CD or DVD that will play on most living room DVD players.

Drive Specifications:

In the Nero InfoTool screenshot above we can see that the Plextor drive supports three (CD-)recording speeds; 16x, 8x and 4x. The drive has a 2MB buffer and has firmware revision 1.00 installed. The PX-504A can almost read all types of media, except for DVD-RAM. From the screenshot we can also see that the drive is a RPC II (Regional Playback Control) DVD reader. This means that the drive has been set to play region 2 DVDs (Europe) and has five region changes left. After the last change the drive will be locked to the last used region. This was done by motion picture studios to control the release of movie titles in each world region. This lock can then be reset four times by the manufacturer of the drive.

In the next PlexTools screenshot above we can see that has an average access time of less than 120ms for CDs and 140ms for DVDs. What the screenshots don't tell us is that the PX-504A supports 10x re-writing, 40x CD and 12x DVD-Video read speeds. Let's take a closer look at some of the features that the drive supports:

Drive Features:

Buffer Underrun Protection:

Nero Burning Rom reports us that the PX-504A drive supports the BURN-Proof (Buffer UnderRuN-Proof) technique but, since this drive is a rebadged NEC drive, we don't think this is correct. It doesn't matter that much though since buffer underrun prevention techniques basically all work in the same way: when the buffer of the recorder falls beneath a certain level, it will stop recording as of a specific location on the CD. The recorder then continues attempting to receive data from the PC to refill the buffer. As soon as the buffer has been refilled, the recorder will start recording again.

PoweRec:

Like almost all new Plextor drives, the PX-504A supports the PoweRec technology to ensure a quality back-up. PoweRec (Plextor Optimised Writing Error Reduction Control) monitors the quality of the disc while burning and will adjust the speed if necessary. You can read a full explanation of the PoweRec technique in this PDF-document.

Lossless Linking:

In the DVD+RW Video format, video can be encoded with a variable bit-rate (VBR). Because the writing process takes place at a constant bit rate, the writing process needs to be suspended and continued frequently. Normally, this would result in a linking loss, making the disc incompatible with read-only devices like DVD Video players and DVD-ROM drives. With DVD+RW it is possible to perform lossless linking, i.e. to suspend and continue the writing process without linking loss. This feature makes the format very efficient and suitable for random write in data as well as video applications (source: Philips).

Write Methods:

CD-Recordable Media:

There isn't much to tell about the Plextor PX-504A's CD-recording performance since it uses the CLV write method which means that the drive starts at 16x writing and stays at this speed throughout the entire disc. The same also applies to the drive's re-write performance. We'll get back to the Plextor's DVD writing performance later on in our review.

Introduction

Read Tests