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-712A may be different. In the box of the PX-712A DVD recorder we can find the following items:

• Plextor PX-712A drive
• Quick installation guide
• Warranty RMA procedure manual
• "Plextor Presents" leaflet with product information
• IDE flatcable, 40 pins
• Mounting screws, emergency eject pin, extra jumper cap
• Application CD-ROM 1 containing;
  • Nero 6
  • InCD 4
  • PowerDVD v5.0
  • PlexTools Professional v2.12
  • Manual
• Application CD-ROM 2 containing;
  • Pinnacle Studio 9SE

As we are used from Plextor they have put together an excellent package. The PX-712A drive is shipped with a great selection of software, which includes Ahead's Nero 6 software, Plextor's own PlexTools Professional software and Pinnacle's Studio software. In the Plextor PX-712A retail box we of course also find everything we need to install the drive into a computer. One thing that we would have liked to see in the package as well is some 12x DVD+R media. I hear some of you thinking, "12x media is not available yet anyway". True, but the Plextor PX-712A can write certain 8x media at 12x and it will come as no surprise that the PX-712A can write Plextor's own 8x DVD+R media at 12x.

On the application CD-ROM we can also find the manual of the drive, available in 16 different languages. As always, the manuals are very clear and easy to understand. A final thing we should mention about the Plextor PX-712A is that for Europe, the Middle-East and Africa Plextor offers a two year warranty period on the drive with on-site collect & return service.

The Drive:

The Plextor PX-712A has the same look and feel as Plextor's previous DVD recorders, the PX-504A and the PX-708A. The main difference between the drives is that the headphone jack and volume control button have disappeared from the PX-712A. Personally I don't mind this at all since in all the years I have been using optical drives, I never used either the headphone jack or the volume control buttons. The PX-712A drive does have the same white colour as the PX-504A and PX-708A drives and it also has the same black plastic strip on its tray:

On the front of the Plextor PX-712A drive we can find the Plextor logo (in full colour), the model number (PX-712A), a 'DVD+ReWriteable' logo, a 'DVD-R/RW' logo and an 'Ultra-Speed ReWriteable' logo. Besides that we have the usual busy/write LED, emergency eject hole and an eject button.

One the back of the drive, from right to left, we find the power connector, the 40-pin IDE connector, the Master/Slave/CableSelect jumpers, a 4-pin analog audio connector and a 2-pin 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-712A drive that was manufactured in Japan in April of this year. We're reviewing the first revision of this drive with firmware 1.01 installed (which can be seen from the TLA number #0001 of which the first two digits indicate the hardware revision and the second two digits the installed firmware 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 shipped with the Plextor Premium and the PX-712A drives only). With the PlexTools Professional software you can control every feature of your Plextor drive and the software also has some advanced error measurement options that can only be used with the Plextor Premium and PX-712A drives. With the PlexTools Professional software you can also extract audio discs and create CD and DVD 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. The Plextor PX-712A drive is, to our knowledge, the first Plextor drive that is shipped with Ahead's Nero 6 software. With the Nero 6 software you of course get the Nero Burning Rom software but also other tools like Nero BackItUp, Nero CoverDesigner, Nero ImageDrive and more. For more information on Nero 6 you can read our Nero 6 preview. 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.

To play your DVD movies on the PX-712A drive, Plextor has included a copy of Cyberlink's PowerDVD software. PowerDVD is a completely solution for viewing DVD movies on your computer. More information can be found at the CyberLink website.

Last but not least Plextor has included Pinnacle's Studio 9 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. For more information on Pinnacle's Studio 9 software you can visit their website.

Drive Specifications:

Let's begin with a listing of the drive's specifications as listed on the Plextor website:

From the table above we can see that the Plextor PX-712A drive supports a lot of technologies, to which we'll get back to later in this review. The drive comes with an 8MB buffer which is a welcome change after seeing many DVD recorders with only a 2MB buffer. Here's a screenshot of the PX-712A's specifications as detected with Nero InfoTool:

Nero InfoTool reports us that the Plextor PX-712A drive can read and write all kinds of media, except for DVD-RAM and dual layer media (DVD+R DL). The drive has a 8MB buffer and firmware 1.01 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 four 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-712A drive supports the BURN-Proof (Buffer UnderRuN-Proof) technique. When the, in this case 8MB, 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-712A 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 with all new Plextor drives, the PX-712A 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 Nero Burning Rom or 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. VariRec can also be used to burn DVD media with. You can modify the laser power of the PX-712A in order to achieve higher compatibility and playability. When recording DVDs with VariRec the write speed will be limited to 4x.

GigaRec:

GigaRec was introduced with the Plextor Premium recorder and it's an interesting new technique. GigaRec allows you to decrease or increase the capacity of a normal 80 minute (700MB) CD-R disc up to 113 minutes (or almost 1GB of data). By compressing the pits and lands that are written on the disc, it is possible to increase the capacity of the disc by 40%. At the rate of 1.4x, failure free playback can be achieved on most modern equipment:

The maximum capacity of a disc is dependant on the type of disc and the GigaRec rate. When activated the recording speed will be limited to 4x and 8x in DAO (Disc At Once) mode on CD-R media without BURN-Proof.

SecuRec:

The SecuRec technique is another technique that was first introduced with the Plextor Premium recorder. This technique allows you to password protect a CD-R disc when recording in DAO mode. When SecuRec is activated, the data on the written disc can only be retrieved by supplying the password you entered when the disc was written. When you or someone else wants to access the recorded disc from a different drive or computer you can use the PlexTools software or the free SecuViewer software, and of course the original password.

Silent Mode:

The Silent Mode option in the PlexTools software allows you to change various settings of your PX-712A drive in order to get a noise-free or silent operation:

Q-Check:

The PlexTools Professional software also allows us to do some more advanced tests using the PX-712A drive. We are already familiar with the C1/C2 Tests, the FE/TE Tests and the Beta/Jitter Tests, but with the Plextor PX-712A you can now also measure the quality of your recorded DVDs! We'll of course take a look at error measurement (write quality) later on in this review.

Write Methods:

Let's take a look at the PX-712A's write performance when using the PlexTools software. Normally we use Nero CD-DVD Speed here but PlexTools can simulate DVD recording (Plextor exclusive?) while Nero CD-DVD Speed requires the DVDR disc to be actually written. This is quite welcome as it saves us some DVDR discs ;)

DVD+R:

The first test we did was of course the DVD+R test. As you can see from the produced graph the PX-712A starts the recording process at 6x and then gradually increases the write speed to 12x. The average recording speed of the PX-712A was 10.46x. When looking at the produced graph you can see three spikes in the recording speed. This is where the laser of the drive is re-calibrated.

DVD-R:

When writing DVD-R media at 8x the Plextor PX-712A also started the write process at 6x and gradually increases it to 8x. The average recording speed was 7.97x. In the produced graph you can again see a re-calibration spike.

DVD±RW:

There isn't much to tell about the Plextor PX-712A's DVD+RW and DVD-RW recording performance. The drive uses the CLV write method which means that the recording speed is the same throughout the entire recording process.

CD-R:

The Plextor PX-712A is the world's first DVD recorder to support 48x CD-R recording speeds. The drive started the write process at 21.04x and had an average write speed of 36.30x (compared to 33.36x for the Plextor PX-708A drive).

CD-RW:

The last thing we've taken a look at is the PX-712A's CD-RW performance. As expected the drive again showed some impressive speeds. The average recording speeds according to the PlexTools software was 23.96x.