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PostPosted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 7:42 pm
by alexnoe
@OC-Freak: When I did a review of the LG 4163B, it was done shortly before christmas, Verbatim Europe told us that they themselves did not yet have 8x +RW nor 6x -RW media because Verbatim Japan hadn't sent any .... where the hell do other reviewers or drive manufacturers get such media from? They can only get it directly from Verbatim Japan :evil:

Concerning Autostrategy: Not worth testing! Why would anyone want to waste some Vampire discs to burn more Vampire discs which lose their data after 3 months instead of being destroyed by the writer right away?? Plextor should have fixed 16x writing instead of doing such hacks :(

However, scanning one disc at 2x speed takes about 1 hour, so you could scan like 100 discs in a week :p If PlexTools were allowing to do PIE/PIF scans in a row, without user interaction, you could at least go shopping while DL media scans are running. I really wonder if i'm the only one wanting to do both scans without having to launch and screenshot them separately. But well, Bushound was the key to the solution 8)

Generally, the results in the review are, well, different from a lot of user's experience. Is it possible that someone at Plextor picked a drive that actually worked, to send it as review drive? =D>

Concerning the number of 16x discs supported, there is nothing wrong with that. You are long enough in that business to know that there is more crap media out there than working media, and that you cannot blame the drive for what media manufacturers like ritek and cmc are doing (like inconsistency). The only thing you can blame a drive for is
a) error rate. It has to limit the write speed if necessary
b) not working on a disc type several other drives work on. Then, the media can't be too bad

E.g. a writer killing Ritek DL discs can be blamed for even trying to write on them, but not for "not ejecting a recorded and working disc". In this case, the plextor 716 actually did a small miracle.

PostPosted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 8:04 pm
by OC-Freak
alexnoe wrote:@OC-Freak: When I did a review of the LG 4163B, it was done shortly before christmas, Verbatim Europe told us that they themselves did not yet have 8x +RW nor 6x -RW media because Verbatim Japan hadn't sent any .... where the hell do other reviewers or drive manufacturers get such media from? They can only get it directly from Verbatim Japan :evil:


Well, some drive manufacturers do at least have such media in their HQ in Asia ;)

PostPosted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 3:31 am
by dolphinius_rex
OC-Freak wrote:
alexnoe wrote:@OC-Freak: When I did a review of the LG 4163B, it was done shortly before christmas, Verbatim Europe told us that they themselves did not yet have 8x +RW nor 6x -RW media because Verbatim Japan hadn't sent any .... where the hell do other reviewers or drive manufacturers get such media from? They can only get it directly from Verbatim Japan :evil:


Well, some drive manufacturers do at least have such media in their HQ in Asia ;)


Exactly!!

LG, Pioneer, Plextor, and probably LiteON all have access to this media. BenQ *might* but I'm guessing they don't.

Sadly, things are moving too quickly now. Reviews are being *obviously* rushed, drives are being pushed to shelves before they're ready, and media isn't getting properly certified or supported. All of which are reasons why I don't care if it takes a month to do a review, as long as it's done properly :wink:

Alex Noe, you aren't the only one who uses the PX-712a to do multiple scans! I include PI8, PIF and Jitter/Beta (and transfer Rate) tests when doing every review now... although sometimes you have to look at the master spreadsheet of results to get all the info, since linking all the pics is a pain in the ass :wink:

PostPosted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 5:12 am
by alexnoe
Jitter tests are rather meaningless on Plextor 712: The stupid thing reports some absolute values, without any scale, and plextools are moving the graph around during scanning. I have examined the Bushound logs for that as well, as there really doesn't seem to be a scale. The drive even reports higher values for lower jitter :o

That means, you cannot compare 2 jitter scans of 2 discs with each other :-( You can only see if the write strategy for one certain disc was somehow bad (e.g. constantly increasing jitter)

PostPosted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 7:01 am
by RJW
alexnoe wrote:@OC-Freak: When I did a review of the LG 4163B, it was done shortly before christmas, Verbatim Europe told us that they themselves did not yet have 8x +RW nor 6x -RW media because Verbatim Japan hadn't sent any .... where the hell do other reviewers or drive manufacturers get such media from? They can only get it directly from Verbatim Japan :evil:

Not verbatim japan but Mitsubishi Kagakuga Media themselves. It might be nitpicking here however there's a difference. That's why also don't like atip linked to verbatim. MCC/MKM had samples in December. However only limited and it seems that some other folks seem to have a higher priority as MCC daughter companny verbatim. Rare but true.

Concerning Autostrategy: Not worth testing! Why would anyone want to waste some Vampire discs to burn more Vampire discs which lose their data after 3 months instead of being destroyed by the writer right away?? Plextor should have fixed 16x writing instead of doing such hacks :(

Not completely true because of some media not being that good supported this feature might be nice to test out. I agree that if plextor had done there jobe better and the manufacturers didn't have such a big variance it would n't be needed.

Concerning the number of 16x discs supported, there is nothing wrong with that. You are long enough in that business to know that there is more crap media out there than working media, and that you cannot blame the drive for what media manufacturers like ritek and cmc are doing (like inconsistency).

Hmm but still it's strange that other drives (like BENQ 1620) does support a lot of other 16x media perfectly. Infact Benq 1620 even supports some media which is in development state or is made by small manufacturers.
So I think we can blame Plextor on that one !!
If the competition can do it then why not some drive that costs twice as much ???? Which you allready concluded yourself as point B.

The only thing you can blame a drive for is
a) error rate. It has to limit the write speed if necessary
b) not working on a disc type several other drives work on. Then, the media can't be too bad


Jitter tests are rather meaningless on Plextor 712

YEah but then again this one was I thought combined with beta originally which does make sens and infact if plextor hadn't borked the scale then it would have been actually quite comparable with what most profesional analzyers are finding.

PostPosted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 7:05 am
by alexnoe
and infact if plextor hadn't borked the scale then it would have been actually quite comparable with what most profesional analzyers are finding.
Full ack. If ......

Hmm but still it's strange that other drives (like BENQ 1620) does support a lot of other 16x media perfectly.
That drive can even write several 8x disc types at 16x (e.g. TY 8x +/-R, Ricoh 8x). I think some manufacturers could learn something from Benq in that respect. Plextor is not the only one :p

PostPosted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 1:49 pm
by dolphinius_rex
alexnoe wrote:That drive can even write several 8x disc types at 16x (e.g. TY 8x +/-R, Ricoh 8x). I think some manufacturers could learn something from Benq in that respect. Plextor is not the only one :p


There's a reason why the BenQ DW1620 is the only drive I own two units of :wink: Even Pioneer and NEC could learn a lot from BenQ :o

PostPosted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 7:20 am
by G@M3FR3@K
RJW, thanks for your criticism although it would have been nice if you had posted this as a reply on my review since then I would have been able to respond sooner ;) As said in the review, if you don't agree with something or want more tests you can request it. I'm not perfect and if you want to have a real 99 minute burn, ask for it and I'll add it. Anyway, some comments might be helpful:

RJW wrote:1 Why only 1 sort of 16x media (MCC). Now some people will say other 16x media is hard to get. Ehh the reviewer is liveing in Holland in other words he should be able to get FUJI 16x DVD+R (PHILIPS) and TRAXDATA 16x DVD+R (RITEK) of Memorex 16 DVD+R (PHILIPS/CMC) at least I can get.

I only had access to 16x media from MCC and I ordered a lot of media already which costs me a lot of money. I thought one disc was enough, together with 8x media that works at 16x. I have now access to Traxdata 16x media which I can test if you want me to. I wasted 30+ discs (excluding OC's media tests) on this review which I thought would be enough.

RJW wrote:2 Why only PI tests. The drive can do more.

True but I feel they don't add anything really.

RJW wrote:3 Autostrategy not really tested !

I tested it on page 2, see the gpah of the three discs. True, more tests can be done but as said in the conclusion: who wants to waste three or more discs every time the drive needs to burn an unsupported disc? More tests are in the forum to which I linked to.

RJW wrote:4 Verbatim as CD-R atip. Please correct it as Mitsubishi. If I would knock on Verbatims door to ask if I could licens the atip I would get a no. Because they can not do it.

Don't get this one, please clarify.

RJW wrote:5 No 16x DVD-R media. If you have access to Verbatim/MCC 8x DVD+RW/6x DVD-RW then why no 16x DVD-R ?

The 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW media tests were done by OC-Freak. I have no access to them myself..

Hope this helps!

PostPosted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 7:26 am
by alexnoe
Don't get this one, please clarify.
The manufacturer of the disc is "Mitsubishi".

PostPosted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:07 am
by G@M3FR3@K
alexnoe wrote:The manufacturer of the disc is "Mitsubishi".

Hmm, I double checked it when I was identifying these Plextor CD-RW discs because I found it strange that it came up with Verbatim. I even tried it in my other PX-712A with the same result. I'll look into it tonight to see if it was a bug or something or if I did something wrong. Thanks for clarifying alex.

PostPosted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:19 am
by alexnoe
Some disc identification tools are a bit sloppy. For a normal user, it doesn't matter if an identification tool says Verbatim or Mitsubishi, everyone knows what is meant (in the case of cd-rw, the only type of quality discs...)

PostPosted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 10:07 am
by Noua
CDrInfo has posted yet another review on this drive, i know it's a little of topic but it's another opinion and more tests that are always good to hear.

http://www.cdr-info.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=11953