Exclusive: Plextor 712A, First 12X DVD+R to Retail
by Kristopher Kubicki on May 14, 2004 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Final Thoughts
After an intensive look at the PX-712A, we are very pleased to say that the drive performed well. Write quality was exceptional; we only saw extraordinary errors on the Memorex RICOHJPN media, and the disc was still readable. Other media, particularly the 8X Yuden disc (which we burned at 12X), looked nearly flawless.Like most Plextor products, the final street price of this drive will be fairly expensive. Retail stores are selling the drive for around $200, but it will certainly come down to the $175 range in the next month or two. Currently, you can buy three NuTech DDW-082 drives for the cost of one PX-712A.
Make no mistake, this is an enthusiast drive. With enthusiast price comes enthusiast performance and enthusiast capabilities. The feature set on the PlexTools software (particularly VariRec) add several features to DVD authoring that you will not find anywhere else (at least for now). Combine that with 12X DVD+R write and 48X CDR write speeds, and you have the fastest, most well rounded retail DVD recorder on the market. With a small hint of déjà vu, we would not be surprised if the PX-712A stays on top of future 12X DVD+R devices for several months.
Unfortunately, the inability to recognize (and of course write!) DVD+R9 was a little discouraging. Even though we think that DVD+R9 will take a long time to catch on, the more savvy early adopters cannot rely on the PX-712A to deliver.
Special Thanks to Sony,Verbatim and Plextor for providing media for this review.
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smjohnson85 - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link
check your screenshot of gigarec. it's showing negative values to very low values instead of the ~500mb - 900mb range it should be. i have the same problem on my plextor premium 52x using the nvidia ide drivers for the nforce2. you could originally fix this by downgrading to the ms ide drivers, but i tried it recently with a newer plextools version and got the same problem. anyone have ideas/fixes for this?RyanVM - Saturday, May 15, 2004 - link
It seems likely to me that a firmware update can take care of the DVD+R9 reading problems.Oh well, here's to waiting for the SATA version!
XRaider - Saturday, May 15, 2004 - link
Kris,Where did you get those Yuden disks at? Are they verbatim or Fujifilm? And where can we get them at?
Thanks.
XRaider
KristopherKubicki - Friday, May 14, 2004 - link
I didnt burn the CMC discs at 12X. I already had them burned so i popped one in and thats what the write descriptor said.I burned 3 Yuden discs including the one included with the drive. None others would burn at 12X although that CMC might have if i didnt have it burned already.
Kristopher
Ian@CDRlabs - Friday, May 14, 2004 - link
Kristopher, how'd you get those CMC discs to work at 12x? The fastest speed my Plextor 712A has been able to write to those discs is 8x.Also, did you burn more than one disc at 12x? Or just the one that came with the drive?
KristopherKubicki - Friday, May 14, 2004 - link
Lol, the 1.01 firmware came out the day i published :(Oh well.
Kristopher
KristopherKubicki - Friday, May 14, 2004 - link
Belzer: Thats Plextors normal read descriptor.We burned the YUDEN000T02 at 12X; that was a typo and is fixed.
Youre correct, its E03 also.
Kristopher
Belzer - Friday, May 14, 2004 - link
Some remarks/questions:"Below, we can see Nero DVD speed has no problem reading the disc using the PX-712A"
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showimage.html?u=...
No problem? That reading curve sure doesn't look very good to me.
Did really YUDEN000T01 burn at 12x? Because YUDEN000T01 is only 4x certified media, not 8x. TY's 8x DVD+R has mid code YUDEN000T02.
Also CMC MAG 301, shouldn't it be CMC MAG E01?
Then:
"Below are a set of write descriptors that we could find for DVD+R and DVD+RW media:
RITEKG03: 1x (2x)
RITEKG04: 4x (4x)
MCC 01RG20: 8x (4x)
MCC 02RG20: 8x (8x)
MKM A02: 4x (4x)
MCC 01RW4X: 4x (4x)
OPTODISCOP1: 2.4x (2.4x)
PRINCO: 2x (1x)"
That's a mix of DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW media in that list.
ivwshane - Friday, May 14, 2004 - link
Anybody know where to get these yuden disks from? Is fuji using them in their dvd+r's?orogogus - Friday, May 14, 2004 - link
wake me up when they get dual layer Plextors on the market. 12x is cool and all, but I want to use DVD9s.