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. Notice that we're taking a look at the European retail package here. The American retail package of the Plextor PX-708A is different. In the box of the PX-708A DVD recorder we can find the following items:

• Plextor PX-708A drive
• Quick installation guide
• Warranty RMA procedure manual
• Leaflet with DVD+R recording information
• IDE flatcable
• Mounting screws, emergency eject pin, extra jumper cap
• Application CD-ROM 1 containing;
  • Pinnacle Studio 8SE
• Application CD-ROM 2 containing;
  • Nero Burning ROM (v5.5)
  • InCD (v4.0)
  • PowerDVD (v5.0)
  • PlexTools Professional (v2.06)
  • Operation manual

Notice that on the image there is also a Plextor DVD+R disc but this is normally not included with the package of the PX-708A. If you're a frequent visitor of our website you will probably have read that the Plextor PX-708A drive can write some 4x DVD+R media at 8x. This was implemented because 8x DVD+R media is currently not available. In the yellow leaflet that is included with the DVD recorder you can read this information too which also mentions that when the drive 'thinks' 8x recording is not safe it will record at 4x instead, regardless of which speed you selected at the beginning of the write process.

When we look at the rest of the Plextor package we can see that Plextor has decided not to include a printed manual anymore like they used to do with all of their other drives (we're talking about the European package here of course). The manual of the drive is now located on the Application CD-ROM. Luckily Plextor hasn't cut back in the software department. The drive comes with an excellent selection of software, including Nero 5.5, PowerDVD 5 and Pinnacle Studio 8SE to which we'll get back to later on this page.

For Europe, Norway and Switzerland Plextor offers a two year warranty period on the drive with on-site collect & return service.

The Drive:

The Plextor PX-708A drive looks exactly the same as the PX-504A drive except for the model number on the drive's tray of course. There are of course also some slight differences when looking at the logo's on both drives since the PX-708A drive supports the DVD-R(W) standard and ultra-speed re-writing (while the PX-504A only supports the DVD+R(W) format and high-speed re-writing). The PX-708A drive has the same white colour as the PX-504A drive and it also has the same black plastic strip on its tray:

On the front of the Plextor drive we can find the Plextor logo (in full colour), the model number (PX-708A), a 'DVD+ReWriteable' logo, a 'DVD-R/RW' logo and an 'Ultra-Speed ReWriteable' logo. Besides that we of course also have our usual headphone jack, volume control, a busy/write LED, emergency eject hole and an eject button.

One the back of the drive we find the usual IDE and power connectors, the Master/Slave/CableSelect jumpers, a 4-pin analog audio connector and an SPDIF (Digital Audio Out) connector. On the back of the drive we can also find a fourth jumper setting with which you can set the drive to DMA mode 2 (MultiWord) instead of UDMA33 it normally uses. We of course left this jumper alone since UDMA33 is by far the best interface.

When we look at the label on the drive we can see that we have a Plextor PX-708A drive that was manufactured in China in August of this year. We're reviewing the first revision of this drive which can be seen from the TLA number (0000 is the first version).

Software:

Plextor's PlexTools Professional software is a well known program and is delivered with European Plextor drives (in America the PlexTools software is only shipped with the Plextor Premium drive to our knowledge). With the PlexTools Professional software you can control every feature of your Plextor drive and the software also has some advanced measurement options that can only be used with the Plextor Premium drive (for a review of this drive and the PlexTools 'Q-Check' options click here). With the PlexTools Professional software you can also extract audio discs and create data and audio compilations.

As we're used from European Plextor drives they're shipped with a copy of Ahead's CD/DVD mastering software, Nero Burning Rom. A while ago Ahead released their Nero 6 software but the Plextor PX-708A drive is shipped with a copy of the Nero Burning ROM 5.5 software. For our review we'll be using Nero Burning ROM v6.0.0.11 (notice that were not using the latest version (v6.0.0.15) since this version has some problems with the PX-708A drive when writing DVDs).

Ahead's packet writing software InCD 4 is also located on the Plextor Application CD-ROM. With InCD 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 and when you want to access a CD-MRW disc on a system that doesn't support this format, Ahead's EasyWrite Reader plug-in is also present on the Plextor Application CD-ROM. Other tools located on this CD-ROM are NeroMediaPlayer and Nero BurnRights (allows an administrator to setup user accounts under Windows XP/2000 so that users without administrative rights can burn CDs with Nero).

To play your DVD movies on the PX-708A drive Plextor has included a copy of Cyberlink's PowerDVD software. PowerDVD is a completely solution for viewing DVD movies on your computer and version 5, which is included in the Plextor package, has some new techniques on board called CLPV and CLEV:

Compared to PowerDVD 4 version 5 has also undergone some design changes. The software already looked good in my opinion but version 5 looks even better:

Last but not least Plextor has included Pinnacle's Studio 8 software. The Studio software 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:

Let's begin with a listing of the drive's specifications as listed on the Plextor website and on the promotional leaflet we got with the drive:

From the table we can see that the Plextor PX-708A drive supports the Mount Rainier format for both CD-RW recording and DVD+RW recording. Besides that the drive supports techniques such as PoweRec and VariRec which we can also find in other Plextor recorders. Let's continue with a screenshot of the PX-708A's specifications as detected with Nero InfoTool:

Nero InfoTool reports us that the Plextor PX-708A drive can read and write all kinds of media, except for DVD-RAM. The drive has a 2MB buffer and firmware 1.00 is installed. 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 PlexTools Professional screenshot above we can see a confirmation on some of the information we got from Nero InfoTool. Besides that PlexTools also reports us the drive's access times (<100ms for CD and <150ms for DVD). Now, let's take a closer look at some of the features that the drive supports.

Drive Features:

Buffer Underrun Protection:

Nero reports us that, as with almost all Plextor drives, the PX-708A drive supports the BURN-Proof (Buffer UnderRuN-Proof) technique. When the, in this case 2MB, 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.

Mount Rainier:

As we already saw in previous screenshots and in the Nero screenshot above the Plextor PX-708A drive supports the Mount Rainier format. Mount Rainier enables native operating system support of data storage on CD-ReWriteable and DVD+ReWriteable discs. This makes the technology far easier to use and allows the replacement of the floppy. Key features include:

• Defect management by the drive itself
• Logical write-addressing at 2k
• Background formatting
• Command set implementation
• Compatibility and standards-compliance

For more information you can visit www.mt-rainier.org.

PoweRec:

As almost all new Plextor drives, the PX-708A 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. Via the PlexTools Professional software PoweRec can be disabled to force the drive to write media at a selected speed instead of the speed the recorder would normally use when its quality checks (PoweRec) are enabled. A small benefit of this option is that when you disable PoweRec you can see at which speed your media would normally be written:

VariRec:

The VariRec technology allows you to change the drive's laser power when writing an audio disc. With VariRec enabled you should be able to improve the quality of the recorded disc and make the recorded disc more compatible with picky CD-players like a car stereo. Since the Plextor Premium drive the VariRec function has been improved since it now allows 8x writing (previously limited to 4x) and allows you to select the dye type of your CD-R disc in order to select the best write strategy:

CD-R/RW Write Methods:

Let's take a look at the PX-708A's CD-R and CD-RW write performance when using Nero CD Speed. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this review, it's not possible to simulate DVD recordable media using Nero CD-DVD Speed yet so we'll get back to this later on in this review:

CD-Recordable Media:

The Plextor PX-708A drive has an average CD-R write speed of 33.36x which is not bad at all. Because the drive uses the P-CAV writing method it's quite a lot faster than the Plextor PX-W4012S (SCSI) drive for example (30.58x) which uses the Z-CLV write method.

CD-ReWriteable Media:

When looking at the PX-708A's re-write performance the drive again performs well. With an average re-write speed of 23.75x it's not as fast as the Plextor Premium (23.90x average but notice that the Premium can also re-write at 32x) or the TEAC CD-W552E (23.80x average) but it's not far behind.