Plextor 716A Review

DVD Writing Capabilities

For our DVD writing tests we will write to various types of disks including DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-R DL and measure various aspects of the recording such as the total time taken, the write strategy employed and the average speed.

We are also going to measure the write quality of the disks to see how well they have been written using Plextools 2.18 and its Q-CHECK SUM8 PI/PO test. Disks have Parity data called PI/PO which tell the drive how to correct errors.

PI (Parity Inner) errors are normal and can be corrected by a drive but when you have too many the can cause problems as slight defects (scratches, dust, fingerprints etc) may cause a disk to become unreadable.

To simplify how to read the graphs you should remember a few things, the lower the blue lines on the plextools quality graphs, the better the disk. Recording faster will often increase the error rates so low speed recorded disks often have good quality. Different drives and disks have different quality so not everything will be the same, but if you have the same disk and drive then you should expect very similar quality at a given speed.

According to the DVD standards the error limits should be below the following:

Parity Inner Errors (PIE) = 280

Parity Inner Failures (PIF) = 4

Parity Outer Failures (POF) = 0

The bold line on the error graph is always positioned at 280 for PIE. Our quality tests were conducted with a Plextor 716A drive and a Toshiba 1912 DVD-ROM.

DVD Writing Performance

DVD+R RECORDING @ 16 SPEED - POWERREC ON

Manufacturer : YUDEN000 T02
Code : -
Disc Type : DVD+R
Usage : General
Recording Layer : -
Recording Speed : 4 X - 16 X

DVD+R RECORDING @ 16 SPEED - POWERREC OFF

Above we used a Taiyo Yuden disk sent to use from Plextor and although the disk was only certified as 8X speed compatible, we were told that it would write at 16 speed. The drive performs well and peaks at 14X speed but then just towards the end it slows the burn process back down to its original 8 speed bringing the total burn time down to 6 mins and 38 seconds. We are using the default settings with PowerRec on.

Under Plextools Professional 2.18 we ran the Q-Check PI/PO Test under the Plextor 716A drive. This test checks the quality of the disk and the lower the blue peaks the better the quality of disk produced. You can see where the error rates increase towards the end of the disk and then as the speed is dropped by the drive the error rate also decreases. We also ran the test under the Toshiba 1912 DVD-ROM and you can see how it shows the top yellow line which is the write speed super imposed over the quality test.

We ran the test again with PowerRec Turned Off.

This time our drive did write to our Taiyo Yuden media at x16 speed taking only 6 mins and 19 seconds. You can also see that towards the end it didn't slow down but the quality of the disk suffers as the PI/PO errors peak to 650.

Manufacturer : Verbatim
Code : MCC 004
Disc Type : DVD+R
Usage : General
Recording Layer : -
Recording Speed : 4 X - 16 X

Above we also tried a certified 16X disk (the disk is a Verbatim DVD+R x16 photo printable brand). It starts off writing at 6 speed and then continues to write at a constant rate using CAV without any speed drops. It reaches a maximum of 15.82 speed towards the end of the disk, not quite reaching 16x speed giving us a total time of just 6 mins and 19 seconds.

DVD+R DUAL LAYER RECORDING @ 4 SPEED

One of the best features of the new drive is the ability to burn up to (8.5GB) onto a single side using dual-layered disks. You can use the extra capacity for data, movies, games etc. The following picture courtesy of Verbatim explains how double / dual layer disks it works:

VERBATIM 4X DUAL LAYER (LEFT) & VERBATIM 2.4X DUAL LAYER (RIGHT)

Manufacturer : Verbatim
Code : MKM 001
Disc Type : DVD+R DL (Book Type: DVD-ROM)
Usage : General
Recording Layer : -
Recording Speed : 2.4 X - 4 X

We used a Verbatim DVD+R Double Layered disk and recorded a project at 4x speed, the result of which can be seen in the Nero screenshot. The recorded disk finished without any problem giving us a total time of 26 mins and 37 seconds to burn data of 7,954MB (7.95GB). The quality of the disk was excellent and can be seen in the plextools quality shot above. A scan of a 2.4x recorded dual layer disk is also shown - the quality is nearly identical.

DVD-R RECORDING @ 8 SPEED

On our RITEK DVD-R disk it took 8 mins and 41 seconds. As you can see above it used a P-CAV strategy to write the disk - the write quality of this disk was so bad that it wasn't detectable by the quality test.

DVD+R RECORDING @ 8 SPEED

The disk started off writing at 6.03 x speed and then jumps to 8 speed and continues writing at this speed until the end (averaging 7.81 speed). It used the P-CAV strategy and finished in 8 mins and 01 second. The quality of this disk is also shown and it starts off writing them badly but then manages a good burn with errors peaking towards the end.

DVD-R RECORDING @ 4 SPEED

Manufacturer : RITEKG04
Code : -
Disc Type : DVD-R
Usage : General
Recording Layer : -
Recording Speed : 4 X

It writes to our DVD-R disk at 4.01 speed almost all the way throughout using CLV. It took 15 mins and 17 seconds and the write quality was very good.

RE-WRITEABLE DVDS

DVD+RW RECORDING @ 4 SPEED

The Plextor 716A drive is currently the only drive to support DVD+RW media at 8 speed, but unfortunately 8 speed rewriteable DVD media are very hard to get hold of at the moment so instead we used a 4 speed +RW disk.

The drive had no problems when it came to writing to DVD+RW disks. It wrote the disk at 4.02 speed and took 14 mins and 20 seconds to complete our test (this is 26 seconds faster than the 708A drive).

DVD-RW RECORDING @ 2 SPEED

Manufacturer : TDK
Code : TDK502sakuM3
Disc Type : DVD-RW
Usage : General
Recording Speed : 2 X

Next we tried a DVD-RW re-writeable 2 speed disk for the dash "-RW" format (the disk is a TDK scratchproof coated disk). As you can see it took 29 mins and 19 seconds and averaged 2.01 speed throughout this test.

Page 6 - Last Updated: 6 January 2005