Why is the Plextor PX-708A DVD burner the most remarkable burner?
The best way to describe the Plextor PX-708A DVD burner is fast! Additionally Plextor's fast, multiformat drive, PX-708A DVD burner is a better DVD burner than the similarly featured Sony DRU-510A.
The PX-708A writes DVD+R at 8X on 4X-rated discs ( that's not a typo) and is the fastest DVD-rewritable drive with CD-R (40X) and CD-RW (24X) media.
Fast, fast, fast---the PX-708A burned a 600 MB data CD in 2 minutes and a 4 gig DVD is just under 7 minutes. The drive writes 4X DVD-R, 2X DVD-RW, and 4X DVD+RW. It handles every format except DVD-RAM. This DVD burner has a PowerRec recording optimizer and costs about more than the Sony DRU-510A.Installing the PX-708A DVD burner is very easy. A well written, quick-reference guide provides a first rate overview of the setup process. This drive will install without any problems.
Screwdriving skills are all that's needed to get you up and running. The Plextor PX-708A DVD burner comes with mounting screws, an extra jumper and a handy emergency-eject tool for the DVD tray. Aside from the steep price the only other real problem with the PX-708A DVD burner is that there's no drive-to-sound-card cable and the drive does not come with Plextor's PlexTools software.
It should be noted that there have been reports that using the help files for "DVD Creator", one piece of software that comes bundled with this burner, might cause the program to freeze up if you are using the Windows XP platform. Additionally "Photosuite", when installed on Win98 system, can render a machine unbootable.
The PX-708A DVD burner has a headphone jack and a volume control on the front panel to let you listen to audio CDs straight from the drive. The quiet tray mechanism is sturdy with an eject button, emergency-eject hole, and power/busy light on the front panel. The IDE and power connectors, digital and analog audio ports, and drive jumpers are on the back of the drive.
The Plextor PX-708A DVD burner comes with Roxio's Easy CD Creator 6.1, not the Platinum version. Some users prefer Sonic or Nero 6 but you can't have everything! It comes with Nero software and Pinnacle Studio 8. The DVD-movie playback and the photo-editing software are good but the movie editor, DVD Builder, wouldn't automatically burn multiple copies of a test movie.
The Plextor PX-708A DVD burner's 40X CD-R and 24X CD-RW writing makes it the first DVD-rewritable drive. Currently it has the fastest DVD+R write performance of any drive. Additionally the Plextor PX-708A DVD burner tested at or near the top of the pack with every type of media. In movie writing tests on write-once media the Plextor PX-708A DVD burner outperformed the TDK InDVD 400N and the Sony DRU-510A. The drive burned an entire DVD-ROM movie at 8X in less than 10 minutes with 4X-rated media. In other words there's no need to wait for new, more expensive media to appear.
Plextor's online support is always good. Toll-free telephone support is available weekdays from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. PT. They have FAQs, technology white papers, software updates, PDF manuals, and firmware downloads for all of the company's products.
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