Hi there, I am looking to buy a DVD Burner and would value peoples opinion on the Plextor PX-708A Drive as it such a cheap price (£159.00 inc VAT)is it really all its cracked up to be?
Sorry for the late reply. The 708 is everything it's cracked up to be. I've had mine for a bit now and am extremely happy with it. It's smooth a silk and fast as heck. I would recommend it without reservation.
I just installed a 708a on my 2 year old P-4. IT ROCKS!!! I use AutoShrinkISO which includes DVD Shrink and DVD Decrypter. I was also forced to buy a pack of Memorex DVD+R's which, as it happens, are the ones made by CMC, however, I upgraded my firmware to 1.04 and have been using DVD Decrypter to burn my 'backup' movies and lo' and behold they all have played flawlessy so far on my Panasonic DVD-CP72S 5 Disc Changer. I play them thru my Sony XBR 40" HDTV so if there were any discrepancies, I would definitley know. DVD+R ISO burning @ 6x-8x, cd music ripping @ 40x!!!! As well as the VariRec technology. Screw that dual layer hype, this drive rocks. It'll probably be at least a year before dual layer drives and dual layer media is even feasibly affordable anyway.
I too have the px-708a & its probably the best one out there, of course if you do your homework, you will see some of it's problems, but, ALL repeat ALL drives do have there little quirks. When they first came out Plextor had a bad batch, make sure the TLA is #0103. because the bad one's were TLA 0001 or 2 if I remember correctly. I got a TLA #0103 so I was one of the lucky ones. You say the price is around 159.00pounds inc VAT.That's not to bad of a price, here in Canada I got the Plextor for 269.00cdn plus 7%gst & 8%pst yepper 15% tax so the price came ot about $310.00 give or take a few cents. You can get cheaper drives, but I do believe Plextor make a quality drive, but you pay for it too. I was lucky I got mine on sale, a lot of us here in Canada payed over $400.00cdn for this baby, in fact as I type this out I looked at a web site & the price is NoW $369.00 plus the 15% tax & the px-708uf is $499.00 plus $75.00 dollars in tax, WOW, I was lucky to get mine on sale. Is the Plextor worth that much money, only yer wallet knows for sure.Good luck in making a wise purchase, yer half way there now.Also remember the Px-708a likes expensive media so put that into your thoughts as well.So when Discs go on sale start buying.I have used TDK dvd+r 4x & Fuji dvd-&+R & Verbatim dvd/rw all with no coasters, lucky me. _X_X_X_X_X_[small]Dave Here is my System INfo: Asus P4PE MoBo,533FSB,2.4 iTEL,512mb PC2700,ATI 8500LE 128mb,ATI TV Wonder Pro R/C,Teac CD-W58E,PLEXTOR PX-708A,Western Digital Cav.SE 80 GiG w/8mb data buffer,this custom made system is running on WinXP.[/small]
Use Ritek discs. Less expensive than TDK, Fuji and Verbatim with equal or better quality. Essentially all drives do better with "expensive" discs because the cheap low quality discs will inherently cause problems over the whole range of burners. There are some that swear by Princos and claim to never have had a coaster with them but they are the exception to the rule. With Riteks (and their known quality) going for around a buck apiece on the net I don't understand the desire to pinch a penny and accept a certain amount of coasters as a given. When you end up with ten coasters out of 50 at 80 cents apiece you've almost made up the difference you saved over buying Riteks. Color me funny but it makes no sense to me.
Well then i think I shall be getting one of these and a couple of new 120GB SATA Hard Drive. Well if your going to upgrade one drive you might as well do them all LOL
Well the drives are ordered along with a Antec Sonnata case as the Ante True Power supply has SATA power connectors so its new drives and a new home for my ASUS A7N8X Deluxe mobo.
