Plextor First With A 12x DVD+R Drive 271
Tesko writes "It seems the first 12x DVD+R drive has been released by none other than Plextor, with their Model PX-712A (Product link here). The drive's write speed includes, 48X CD-R, 24X CD-RW, 12X DVD+R, 8X DVD-R, 4X DVD+RW, 4X DVD-RW. And it's read speed comes in at 48X CD-ROM/CD-R, and 16X DVD-ROM. Also noteworthy, the drive apparently has a 8MB buffer."
I'd never buy one of these! (Score:5, Funny)
[I've used other Plextor products and been happy with them.]
Re:I'd never buy one of these! (Score:2, Funny)
with drives so fast, you might miss the burn process if you blink
Re:I'd never buy one of these! (Score:2)
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 11px;
line-height: 14px;
color: #333333;
text-decoration: blink;
}
text-decoration: blink. hmm... what else could blink possibly do? I guess Internet explorer ignored that CSS property for some reason, but it's ugly on Mozilla. Fix your website plextor!
Re:I'd never buy one of these! (Score:2, Interesting)
After a quick look at the standards, one can tell that the browsers are not required to support blink
quote w3c.org:
Text blinks (alternates between visible and invisible). Conforming user agents are not required to support this value. http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/text.html#lining-strikin g-props [w3.org]
looks like its being maintained like this in css3 http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/CR-css3-text-20030514/#t ext-blink [w3.org]
Re:I'd never buy one of these! (Score:5, Informative)
filter for 'blink'
browser.blink_allowed : set to "false"
Re:I'd never buy one of these! (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps though, that's the problem. Maybe they locked him in a closet 5-6 years ago, and are too cheap to buy him new training materials?
Re:I'd never buy one of these! (Score:3, Informative)
Mental note - don't buy Plextor until they learn that 'cool' HTML tricks from 1995 are not a good idea.
Re:I'd never buy one of these! (Score:2)
Re:I'd never buy one of these! (Score:2)
The drive is reasonably priced, I think. A lot of people still pay about $200 for quality brand names for 4x DVD±RW at retail stores.
Re:I'd never buy one of these! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'd never buy one of these! (Score:2)
The good old days (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The good old days (Score:5, Funny)
That's the "old days?" I've got a 1x CD burner in my closet. We're talking 1x read and 1x write with a sweet proprietary controller. 150 KB/s is all you really need anyway.
Re:The good old days (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The good old days (Score:3, Funny)
Now I get pissed when it takes more than 5 seconds for a program to launch.
Re:The good old days (Score:3, Funny)
I used paper tape and punch cards, I even knew how to read the paper tape we used on a teletype terminal connected via an acoustic coupler to the computer.
Cassette tape... That's so 80's!
If only ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If only ... (Score:2)
~S
Re:If only ... (Score:5, Informative)
Media costs? Well let's see..
25 4X DVD+R for $31 [newegg.com]
100 52X CD-R for $31 [newegg.com]
So that's.. 25*4700MB[*] / 31 = 3.7GB/$ for DVDs
And.. 100*700MB / 31 = 2.2GB/$ for CDs.
Add in the fact that, to burn 4.7GB in CDs takes 7x700MB CDs, so you're doing a lot more disc swapping.. I can't see any reason to use CDs. Especially not for media cost reasons. Yeah, you can get cheaper media than that, but if you want good quality stuff, this is the range you're looking at.
[*] DVDs are 4700MB, not 4.7GB (4812MB)
Re:If only ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If only ... (Score:5, Interesting)
>For a backup of critical data, I'd want to be able
>to read it at as many places as possible.
Huh?? How on earth did this post get modded "insightful"? I've had a DVD drive in my PC since 1999. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a home PC that *didn't* have a DVD drive. Personally, I haven't seen one in several years now.
Corporate PC's might be another matter, but then, you've got the network and LOTS of PC's to choose from in that environment. I'm sure one of the hundreds of machines at the typical corporate site will have a DVD drive.
And since vanilla DVD-ROM drives can be had for around $30 or so, it's not like they're some exotic technology nobody could afford to add to a machine, in the unlikely event they're somehow stuck with DVD backup discs they can't read because some PC dinosaur doesn't have a DVD-ROM drive.
If you're so worried about being compatible with "as many places as possible", backup to 3.5" floppies. They're ubiquitous. At 1.44MB a pop though, be prepared to deal with 1,000+ discs to backup today's average PC hard drive.
Re:If only ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:If only ... (Score:2)
I might get a DL burner for backups but that would be the only use I would have for it.
Re:If only ... (Score:2)
I can think of plenty of other people that don't have a DVD drive either.
Granted, that's not going to stop me from backing stuff up to DVD. If my computer blew up, I think I could scrounge up the money to buy another DVD drive.
Re:If only ... (Score:4, Insightful)
They use the lovely base-10 gigabyte.
Re:If only ... (Score:3, Informative)
4700000000 bytes = 4589843KB = 4482MB = 4.37GB.
Going back to my original calculation..
25*4.37GB / 31 = 3.5GB/$ for DVDs
So, still considerably cheaper.
Re:If only ... (Score:2)
Ahh, can't think during finals week.
Re:If only ... (Score:2)
Actually no. DVDs are 4700 mln bytes, which is around 4472MB AFAIR.
Robert
PS Well, most DVDs I use are 4,706,000,000 bytes or so.
Re:If only ... (Score:2)
Re:If only ... (Score:2)
Everybody in the world except perhaps for Osama Bin Laden's dishwasher has a CD-ROM drive on their PC. When you burn a CD for a stranger, then you know that they will be able to read it.
Not so with DVD. Market acceptance of DVD-ROMs is still low and will probably not catch on like CDs did in the mid 1990s because of the huge number of DVD movie players being sold cheaply.
When the media cost of DVD (on an average) falls to about 50% that of CD-ROM for the sa
Re:If only ... (Score:2)
Wake up, girl! Remember the preview is not just for coming attractions.
Ubiquity and space waste to be considered (Score:4, Interesting)
I can go down to my local supermarket and pick up a DVD-R AND a DVD+R in either single of 5-packs. Standard supermarket "people who buy this really have no clue about tech prices" markup applies, but still... I can get one until 12am if I really need to.
I have to agree with my parent though; There's no point buying more space at a lower cost per MB if you're not going to use it.
There are ways to maximize storage, though. Incremental backups on a single CD, until it fills up, for example. I don't personally like that approach since it puts too many eggs in one basket. It also increases the potential for faulty reads on other DVD readers. heck, I still have trouble getting my multi-session CD-R's to read on all of my CD-ROMS!
Eh, no big (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Eh, no big (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Eh, no big (Score:2)
Re:Eh, no big (Score:2)
Don't know if drivers was a typo, but what you said may be more true than you realize - the switch to writing to DL (dual layer) DVDs is looking like it might be accomplished with a simple firmware upgrade, at least for some drives. Check this [anandtech.com] out for a little more info (basically, a new DL writer appears to use exactly the same controller as a single layer writer, so it looks like the difference is largely a firmware thing).
please explain. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can anyone with a bit of know-how explain why the colour of the tray would minimse Jitter?
Re:please explain. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:please explain. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:please explain. (Score:2)
Re:please explain. (Score:5, Informative)
I hate to break it to you, but 650nm is RED, not blue. Blue is 450nm. And anyways, current DVD technology doesn't use blue lasers anyway
A friendlier link (Score:5, Informative)
You'll also note that us lucky non-US customers get a 2-year On-Site collect and return warranty. Woo!
Speedy. (Score:5, Insightful)
1385KB/s * 12 = 16620KB/s, or in other words: the buffer will empty in half a second if the stream dries up. Good thing we have linking.
(I assume it's zoned so the real numbers will probably be slightly less)
Re:Speedy. (Score:2)
Re:Speedy. (Score:2, Informative)
Sweet (Score:5, Interesting)
8Mb buffer? (Score:3, Interesting)
As it is, I've already reached a happy medium where I only burn at 12x on my CDR because I know that no matter how shoddy the media I use in the drive is, i've got a 99% chance of a sucessful burn.
I imagine, that if I was to buy a DVD writer I'd end up in the same 'middle-ground' - I don't even know if I can find a use for all this 'speed' when writing sessions are usually relegated to coffee breaks and lunchtimes anyway.
Re:8Mb buffer? (Score:2)
Re:8Mb buffer? (Score:3, Interesting)
I use a Sony 40x burner with buffer underrun, and choose the "optimal" setting. If I'm burning a large ISO, by the end of the disk, it'll be sustaining 34x to 38x, and out of many hundreds of disks, I've got a *100%* success rate.
steve
Re:8Mb buffer? (Score:2)
Burning at 12 speed on a 2 year old drive pretty much guarantees success
And as I said, when you do burning in the time that the system would otherwise be unused, you get 100% resource dedication to the operation.
Units (Score:2)
8MB is eight megabytes
The case of the 'b' is very important, although I suppose not as imortant as the "m", as lower case is milli, and upper case is mega.
At 12x write, I guess an 8MB buffer would be data that is exhausted in less than a tenth of a second. It is still useful for keeping things going smoothly because BURNPROOF slows things down a lot when the drive runs out of data. Many drives still have 2MB.
It is a bit of a concern as EAC says it prefers to not have any buffers at a
Re:Units (Score:2)
Of course, it would be interesting to know if that same 8MB buffer is available for all write modes including CDR which could be quite useful as it is a reasonable ammount.
Well for CD-ROMs (Score:2)
Ooo... (Score:2, Funny)
Psshht! (Score:5, Funny)
Real nerds memorize their data!
Re:Psshht! (Score:2)
Re:Psshht! (Score:4, Funny)
Real nerds memorize their data!
Hmm... so since I store my passwords on a post-it note on my monitor, I use must be using optical storage then?
So... (Score:3, Funny)
Yes (Score:2)
Dead Technology! (Score:5, Informative)
12x speed is very nice but this is still a single layer dvd writer. The first of the dual layers will be out in a few weeks. Sony is sceduled to be out the 16th. You can already preorder it. The specs this beast are nice but its dead on the floor. Wait till the dual layer is here then they will be giving them away.
Re:Dead Technology! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Dead Technology! (Score:2)
I don't think there is a point in buying a 12x single layer-only drive. I think having a drive that writes 8x single layer and 2.4x double layer is far more useful than one that writes 12x single layer and double layer not at all.
Re:Dead Technology! (Score:4, Informative)
From what I've read its not quite that bad. The first layer is burned at 8x. It's the second layer that is burned at 2.4x. That I can live with. Most of us are going to use this to back up movies that we have bought that are dual layered. Most dual layered dvds are between 5 and 7 GB long. So basiclly you will be writing between 1 and 3 GB to the second layer at 2.4x. Not bad, not good, but not bad.
Re:Dead Technology! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dead Technology! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup, but, if I am backing up a DL DVD, then here are my options:
1) Dual Layer option:
backup + burn (~ 1 hr)
2) Single Layer option 1: (shrink)
strip + requantize + burn (~2hrs)
3) Single Layer option 2: (shrink)
strip + reencode + burn (~12-20 hrs)
4) Single Layer option 3: (2 DVD-R's)
backup, separate, edit IFO files + reauthor + burn
Re:Dead Technology! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll take it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'll take it (Score:2)
I'm not impressed by Plextor anymore. I've had two of their SCSI CD units die on me within the past couple of years. One was a plain Plextor SCSI CD-ROM drive, which experienced only light use, and died after about a year and a half after purchase. I was so annoyed I never bothered to send it back under warranty. The other, which finally died yesterday after months of intermittent hardware errors, was a SCSI CD-RW (Plexwriter 4/12/32) drive. Again, it had only experienced ligh
Yeah but no double Layer support (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeah but no double Layer support (Score:2)
Well that's your point of view but for my part I see many useful utilities for 8.5 GB.
First I want to be able to fit a "Norton Ghost" backups of my operating system on a single DVD. The actual capacity is not big enough and other solutions are to expensive. The double layer 8.5GB seams to be the perfect solution.
I am also right now transferring old 8mm family films to digital and been able to fit everything in half the amount of DVD's
Re:Yeah but no double Layer support (Score:2)
Dear lord, what operating system are you using that a normal DVD doesn't have enough capacity to back up?
Nice, but (Score:5, Funny)
If it's not Dual Layer, then it's just not cutting edge for the "/." crowd.
Now, if the drive was DL AND 12x DVD+R AND could perform a 34 priority crawl of the internet for Natalie Portman pics AND burn them to media automatically, then, AND ONLY THEN, would it be a "/."-worty article.
Re:Nice, but (Score:5, Funny)
you forgot: (Score:2)
SATA version too (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SATA version too (Score:4, Funny)
A pony.
My G4 burns 4xDVD-R at 1x - ouch (Score:5, Informative)
Hopefully Apple will start making faster DVD burners standard in their G5's very soon now!
Re:My G4 burns 4xDVD-R at 1x - ouch (Score:2)
I do recall some software being able to write only to the SuperDrive, but I thought that was "fixed" somewhere along the line.
However, I have the Pioneer DVR-A04 (in my PC), and I feel your pain. With the newer firmwares, I can't write to a 4x DVD-R at all, it seems. Could be the discs mind you, but I've been hearing rum
Woohoo (Score:4, Funny)
Plextor drives are good (Score:4, Informative)
So yeah, well done Plextor
Marketing (Score:3, Funny)
SATA version (Score:3, Interesting)
computer that does not need parallel ATA is a reality.
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Saying that others already do similar things does not answer the Q.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Informative)
It's that main point that has had me waiting for 8x to be approved until I buy a new DVD-R drive (my current drive is a Pioneer DVR-A04). When I checked out the media list for the Pioneer DVR-A07, I noticed that they're playing the same tricks as they did for 2x on the A03 and A04 - certain firmwares, certain media brands, must go through Pioneer certification, blah, blah, blah. Although there's a bunch of drives that are claimed to be 8x compatible, I believe that many of them (not all) are OEM Pioneer drives.
Now, if they could ratify 8x -R as a standard and get a good dual-layer drive out, I'd pay a good chunk of change for it.
-- Joe
Re:DVD-++-+-RRWR- (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.videohelp.com/dvd [videohelp.com]
Re:Oh stop it (Score:2)
Re:Does it run on GNU/Linux? (Score:5, Informative)
yes. And with the 2.6 kernels, you don't even need SCSI emulation any longer.
enjoy
Stupid comment (Score:3, Interesting)
How dumb is this statement?
I have a 250GB HD, and I need to back about 200G of it up.
Each DVD+/-R holds, for the sake of this argument, 5G. That's 40 DVD's to back things up completely. Now then, each DVD at 2.4x takes 1/2 hour, so this is 20 hours to back things up. That means it takes me about 3-4 days since I don't spend every waking hour backing up.
If I can go to a 12 speed drive, then my time drops to a fraction, and
Re:Stupid comment (Score:3, Funny)
Blah, blah, source code, blah, blah, Linux images, blah, blah, porn, and soforth
Re:Stupid comment (Score:3, Informative)
Aside from driving the local network admin nuts ("We need to buy ANOTHER multi-terabyte raid to do local backups?!?"), the data we pull needs to be backed up. We used to burn CDs, and only recently have we s
Re:-1 TROLL? (Score:2)
Re:But can you buy the disks? (Score:2)
Re:Why no SATA support? (Score:3, Informative)
Due out slightly after the IDE version. Mind you, there's no performance reason to go with SATA, which is probably why the uptake of SATA optical drives is so slow.
Re:The drive might be fast, but the media... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The drive might be fast, but the media... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:SCSI is dead. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SCSI is dead. (Score:2, Insightful)
The minor performance increase a home user might realise with SCSI is far outweighed by the exhorbitant price premium they charge.
Re:Mark this Redundant (Score:2)