Plextor 708A Review

CD TESTS2 - CAPABILITIES

Overburning CDs - 99min CDRs

For our 99min CD overburning test we used CD speed's overburn function. This test demands two things: approved media and a drive that's capable of overburning in DAO mode. The disk approved for 99min burning we used was an Infiniti 99min 32 X speed disk.

As you can see above the Plextor 708A supports 99min CD-Rs and during the overburning test, it managed to write up to 101mins and 11 secs. Unlike other dvd writers the simulation stated that it didn't need to slow down and wrote at the full 40x speed (see what it really did below)!

Writing

We wrote the data using Nero:

It didn't actually burn at 40x as indicated but it seems Plextor's PoweRec slowed the burn down to 16X and finished in 7 mins.

99min CD-R Read Test

In this test we used the 99min which we had created in the previous test.

The 708A gave a superb performance when it came to dealing with 99min CD-Rs - although writing is limited at 16x. It had no problems reading the full 99mins and managed a peak read speed of 43.97X.

CloneCD

We checked the capabilities of the drive under CloneCD:

The drive is fully compatible with CloneCD's DAO RAW modes and can write CD+G.

Reading

We checked the read performance with some popular Safedisk 2 protected games: MaxPayne & Serious Sam: 2nd Encounter. Intelligent Bad Sector scanner was turned off and Fast Error Skip was turned on so as to compare it with the other drives.

The test CDs we tried took 24mins using I.B.S off and fast error skip turned off. We also tried with I.B.S. on and fast error skip on and the drives performance was better:

Safedisk 2 Read Speed

I 01:12:35 Starting copy from PLEXTOR DVDR PX-708A to C:\DVDWriting\maxpayne.ccd
I 01:12:35 Read Speed for Data Tracks: Maximum
I 01:12:35 Read Speed for Audio Tracks: Maximum
I 01:12:35 Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: Yes
I 01:12:35 Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
I 01:12:35 Fast Error Skip: Yes
I 01:12:35 Don't report read errors: Yes
I 01:12:35 Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: Yes
I 01:12:35 CD contains CD-Text: No
I 01:12:35 Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-335411)
I 01:13:00 Fast Error Skip has been enabled automatically!
I 01:13:10 Fast Error Skip has been disabled automatically!
I 01:16:54 Duration of operation: 00:04:19
I 01:16:54 Average Speed: 3038 kBytes/s (17.27)
I 01:16:54 Reading finished!

Philips DVDRW228k: Average Speed: 756 kBytes/s (4.30)

Pioneer A04: Average Speed: 193 kBytes/s (1.10)

Pioneer A05: Average Speed: 251 kBytes/s (1.43)

Plextor 708A: Average Speed: 3038 kBytes/s (17.27)

The Plextor 708A's Safedisk 2 read performance was very good - in fact its the best we have seen in a DVD writer.

SAFEDISK 2 Writing

We tested if the drive can handle correct EFM encoding with CloneCD by writing Serious Sam 2nd Encounter (which is protected with Safedisk 2.51):

AWS OFF: Copy works!

The disk worked in our DVD-ROM and we didn't need to enable the Amplify Weak Sectors option of CloneCD. The 708A DVD burner is 100% compatible with CloneCD and is very good for backing up protected game CDs.

LaserLok Read Test

We tested the drive's ability to read a Laserlok protected CD using an Original Desperados:

I 23:38:29 CloneCD Version 4.3.1.7 started!
I 23:42:22 Read Speed for Data Tracks: Maximum
I 23:42:22 Read Speed for Audio Tracks: Maximum
I 23:42:22 Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: Yes
I 23:42:22 Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
I 23:42:22 Fast Error Skip: Yes
I 23:42:22 Don't report read errors: Yes
I 23:42:22 Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: Yes
I 23:42:22 CD contains CD-Text: No
I 23:42:22 Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-340206)
I 23:42:48 Fast Error Skip has been enabled automatically!
I 23:42:52 Scanning bad sectors...
W 23:48:08 Writing Dummy Sectors 2103 to 2181
I 23:48:57 Scanning bad sectors...
W 23:54:14 Writing Dummy Sectors 2403 to 2482
I 23:54:51 Scanning bad sectors...

..

I 01:08:38 Duration of operation: 01:26:16
I 01:08:38 Average Speed: 154 kBytes/s (0.88)
I 01:08:38 Reading finished!

The 708A took 1h 26mins to read a Laserlok disk - one of the few weaknesses the 708A showed.

Region Protection

As part of their licensing deal most new DVD-ROM drives are region protected and will only playback a DVD movie title from a certain region. We checked to see if the 708A had region protection:

The Plextor 708A is RPC-II region protected (RPC-2 devices allow you to change the drive's region a certain number of times before the drive becomes permanently locked).

Page 4 - Last Updated: 25 November 2003