Is my Plextor 708 defective?

[Civic2oo1x]

I posted in a question the other day on whether or not I should upgrade from my Lite-On 4x to the Plextor 8x. On an impluse I decided to buy the Plextor and give it a trial. First thing I did was unplug my Lite-On and install the Plextor. After installing the drive, I went to the website and grabbed the latest firmware upgrade for it (1.03). Using DVDXCopy I was very disappointed to see that the read speeds for the new drive was almost twice what my Lite-On was. Using Disc 1 of Dawson's Creek Season 1 for example, my Lite-On would read the disc in about 26:00 whereas the Plextor was going to take over 45 minutes to read! Both drives are certified as 12x DVD-Rom read. I quickly canceled the read. What's odd is that I did a test burn of 4.7GB of data on my PC and the Plextor ran through it at 6 minutes, which is quite fast. I figured it might be my PC as a fresh install of Windows had to be done to get my Lite-On to respectable reads (was running XP before), so I installed the Plextor in another PC, same thing. Now I wouldn't mind paying $200 if the performance was a great increase, but whatever gain I get in write times I'm losing almost two fold in read times. The drive was the last one at my Best Buy and it had be crushed in at the top, but the seal was still new and the contents were perfect including the styrofoam. Do you think my drive is faulty or am I doing something wrong? What reason would the write times be at par, but the read times so bad?

 

[jdogg707]

I had all kinds of problems using DVD X Copy with my Plextor 708A and after many hours on the phone with 321 Studios tech support they told me the drive was not fully supported. Do yourself a favor and go grab DVD Shrink, it's a great program that does pretty much anything you could want to do with a DVD (Rip, Re-Author, De-Select certain portions of the DVD). It works great, then use Nero to burn the DVD. It's very simple, fast, and much better than using DVD X Copy.

 

[Richard98]

I may have found the answer to your question:
here

Q My Plextor PX-708A drive only reads DVD-Video discs at 2x! Can't I make it go any faster than that?

A Yes, you can 'unlock' the drive by making sure the drive is empty and closed. Then press and hold the drive's eject button for about three second until the drive's LED flashes green three times. Release the eject button so that the drive's tray will open. Now insert a DVD-Video disc and voila the drive reads faster. When you eject the disc or when you cut the drive's power, the PX-708A will be reset to 2x reading again.

 

[1966]

Originally posted by: Richard98
I may have found the answer to your question:
here

Q My Plextor PX-708A drive only reads DVD-Video discs at 2x! Can't I make it go any faster than that?

A Yes, you can 'unlock' the drive by making sure the drive is empty and closed. Then press and hold the drive's eject button for about three second until the drive's LED flashes green three times. Release the eject button so that the drive's tray will open. Now insert a DVD-Video disc and voila the drive reads faster. When you eject the disc or when you cut the drive's power, the PX-708A will be reset to 2x reading again.

Do you have to tap your head & rub your tummy at the same time to burn dvd's ? :disgust:

 

[Richard98]

Originally posted by: 1966

Originally posted by: Richard98
I may have found the answer to your question:
here

Q My Plextor PX-708A drive only reads DVD-Video discs at 2x! Can't I make it go any faster than that?

A Yes, you can 'unlock' the drive by making sure the drive is empty and closed. Then press and hold the drive's eject button for about three second until the drive's LED flashes green three times. Release the eject button so that the drive's tray will open. Now insert a DVD-Video disc and voila the drive reads faster. When you eject the disc or when you cut the drive's power, the PX-708A will be reset to 2x reading again.

Do you have to tap your head & rub your tummy at the same time to burn dvd's ? :disgust:

Yeah, that does seem to be a PIA, but if it works it's better than waiting 45 minutes for the drive to read a DVD.

 

[Civic2oo1x]

Thanks, that holding the eject button thing does work, cuts my read times down from 45-50 minutes to 22-25 minutes. I'm thinking about trying DVDShrink or even returning this drive if there is no permanent solution to this. Maybe in the next version 321 will implement full compatibility for the 708. I have 29 more days to see how the drive works before I return it. Any way to bypass the PIA mode?