Plextor Introduces 16X DVD±R/RW SATA Drive

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Thanks to Steven for the heads up.

New DVD/CD Burner Supports Dual-Layer DVD+R Technology for Increased DVD Recordable Capacity to 8.5 GB

Plextor® Corp., a leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media equipment, today announced the new PX-716SA series DVD±R/RW drive. Featuring a native Serial ATA (SATA) interface and high-speed 16X DVD+R and 16X DVD-R recording, the internal drive combines fast performance, 150 MB/sec bandwidth, and recording features that ensure reliable, high-quality results across a broad spectrum of media.

The drive achieves blazing fast 16X CAV performance on recommended 8X DVD+R media, and burns a 4.7GB DVD in less than six minutes, one minute faster than leading ZCLV competitors. The new drive also supports dual-layer DVD media, enabling users to burn up to four hours of high-quality MPEG-2 video on a single 8.5GB DVD disc in approximately 28 minutes.

The internal PX-716SA drive features an integrated Serial ATA connection, enabling OEMs and System Integrators to leverage the benefits of SATA, including 150 MB/sec bandwidth, elimination of master/slave configuration jumper issues, a substantial pin count reduction, and thinner cables to help air-flow and improve cable routing.

“The newest 16X DVD drive from Plextor is specifically designed for personal computer manufacturers who want to integrate a DVD/CD burner that sets new standards for performance, convenience, and reliability,” said Howard Wing, vice president of sales and marketing for Plextor. “The combination of Serial ATA interface, support for dual-layer media, and the Intelligent Recording features can really help OEMs differentiate their PCs from competitive offerings.”

News source: Plextor Press Release

Cont...

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There's some speculation that this fresh delay - which may also have a knock-on impact on the launch date of the European version, which had already been delayed into Q1 2005 - will give the firm time to reintegrate the online component, but Sony has so far not commented on this possibility, and is still officially planning to launch a separate online-enabled Gran Turismo product later next year.

(2 replies) #1 hotrod on 22 Nov 2004 - 19:43

Very SWEET!!!!
i've been waiting on some more SATA drives!!

#1.1 Rudy on 22 Nov 2004 - 22:48

i cant wait untill i can finally get rid of those stupid pata optical drives i have in my computer

#1.2 Shining Arcanine on 23 Nov 2004 - 00:57

Now we need more SATA connectors.

#2 ripgut on 22 Nov 2004 - 19:44

suhweet!!! bout damn time optical drives went sata

#3 dave164 on 22 Nov 2004 - 19:52

Nice, but expensive in pound sterling, did i currency convert and its £85

(11 replies) #4 no-sweat on 22 Nov 2004 - 20:22

what the heck is SATA?

#4.1 MrA on 22 Nov 2004 - 20:25

Serial-ATA. Lets you connect drives (HDD, DVD, whatever) to your comp just like regular ATA, except with nice thin cables instead of those terrible fat ones.

#4.2 Colin-uk on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:16

is that the only difference?

i payed £90 for my current DVD Writer...dam

lol
(although that was last yr)

#4.3 Avi on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:23

Well, SATA is also faster

#4.4 no-sweat on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:24

isnt ATA the same as IDE? those big flat cables? if so, what do you plug the end of the SATA cable into on the motherboard????

#4.5 Skyfrog on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:28

Serial ATA replaces the old parallel interface with a serial interface, meaning much smaller cables and faster transfer speeds (because they can operate at a higher frequency). The cables can be much longer and since they are so thin routing and airflow problems should be a thing of the past. Also done away with is having to configure a drive as master or slave. Serial ATA is a point to point interface so each drive is directly linked to the host, and can even be hot-plugged (plugged in or unplugged while the system is running). There are probably other advantages but in short, it rules.

ATA stands for AT Attachment (a name from the original IBM AT (Advanced Technology) computers). IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics, meaning you don't need a seperate drive controller card like in the olden days; it is built right into the drive. To see the new connectors and cables search for Serial ATA on Google Image Search.

#4.6 no-sweat on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:40

ohhhhh so your motherboard most likely already has a serial ata port.. i just looked and mine does. why the heck isnt SATA more popular now?? everything should be SATA. i hate dealing with this ADA IDE wachamacallit stuff.

#4.7 MrA on 22 Nov 2004 - 23:12

There are plenty of SATA HDDs around, I have one. The industry seems to have been slow to implement SATA optical drives and other storage devices. I have no idea why. Anyone care to explain this?

#4.8 FrankE9999 on 22 Nov 2004 - 23:39

SATA has been slow to catch on because of the cost and the fact that it doesn't offer any performance gain over ATA-100 or ATA-133.

#4.9 BananaMan on 23 Nov 2004 - 01:11

QUOTE

Not for CD/DVD-ROM/RW but there's certainly speed improvements with SATA hard drives, especially with SATA II features beginning to creep into some drives and SATA controllers (eg. NCQ on the Seagate 7200.7's).

#4.10 Slugbait on 23 Nov 2004 - 07:12

Keep in mind that those SATA 150's are about to become ancient tech. It may be another six months, but consider that you'll be drooling later over a 400.

Just the same, a SATA optical is the next logical step. Good to see Plextor took the initiative to do this (I have four opticals in my two machines...all Plextor)

#4.11 mgleason007 on 23 Nov 2004 - 18:59

Most (all?) motherboards have only 2 SATA ports. I think you can buy PCI add-in SATA cards but that's just plain silly.

(1 reply) #5 moeburn on 22 Nov 2004 - 20:25

Hooray for neowin product placement!

I hate advertising.

#5.1 Skyfrog on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:34

#6 bush on 22 Nov 2004 - 20:26

what to do, what to do

(1 reply) #7 ir0nw0lf on 22 Nov 2004 - 20:28

IIRC, didn't a previous SATA DVD burner from Plextor only work on Intel chipsets, or something like that? I wonder if this drive will suffer from that same problem...

#7.1 dhitb on 23 Nov 2004 - 15:57

You remember correctly

The reason why optical drives don't work with most SATA chipsets is because most SATA chipsets don't support ATAPI which is required for working with optical drives. Unless Plextor figured out a way to work the burner under some kind of hard drive emulation (doubtful), the same problem will probably affect this drive as well.

#8 bucko on 22 Nov 2004 - 20:46

YAY nice work shame I dont have the ££££ and a job

(1 reply) #9 Hills420 on 22 Nov 2004 - 20:58

Where do they sell dual layer discs? I can only find single layer...

#9.1 Jugalator on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:56

Trust me, if you manage to find one selling them you probably don't want them anyway

They cost like 10x more than a single layer disc for 2x the capacity.

I'd only buy one if I were in real bad need and even then I'd think twice..

Better news than this drive would be some news that these discs would get cheaper...

(6 replies) #10 jkinzer on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:00

A salesman at Shop4Tech told me that any media burnt at speeds higher than 4x loses quality. Is this true?

#10.1 fergiej on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:08

Not in my experience. He must have had had load of 4X media to unload. Call him again in a few months. He'll be telling you that anything burnt over 8X will be garbage. You can have errors in burning, sure, but you aren't going to lose quality. That's funny. www.supermediastore.com DL Riteks are still expensive. $8.99 each. But getting better.

#10.2 PCyr on 22 Nov 2004 - 22:53

#10.3 aristotle-dude on 22 Nov 2004 - 22:56

Actually, what he said was partially true. If you are using 4X DVD media with a 4X DVD burner, you should use 2X burn speed if you intend on having skip free playback on consumer set top DVD players. It has to do with the strength of the laser in the recorder and the accuracy of the laser in you player drive.

Your DVDs, might play fine in a computer drive but not work properly in a DVD Player.

If they do come out with 8X media, it might be safe to burn at 4X speed in that case but not with current media/drives.

#10.4 soloredd on 22 Nov 2004 - 23:40

That's not true.

First of all, there already is 8x media (I'm assuming you are talking about SL). You can burn at 8x and be fine with playback; the DVD burner will not burn at 8x the whole burn anyway, it gradually increases.

Second of all, plenty of people, including myself, have burned at 12x and 16x using 8x media (Taiyo Yuden, for example) on a NEC 3500, and the burns have come out just as good as if I burned at 4x. They play fine on the standalone - the standalone is not going to know the difference at what speed you burned at. Burn quality is becoming more and more of an issue only with quality of media. If you buy cheap media, you will get cheap and crappy burns. The opposite is true with quality media.

In short, if you get skips in playback, you need to check the media you are using and also the compatability of the discs to your standalone (for instance, my Sony playsback -R like garbage, if at all; on the otherhand, it plays +R with no hiccups at all, even after doing a 16x burn).

#10.5 aristotle-dude on 23 Nov 2004 - 01:05

Uh. Yeah, It gradually increases, that is why I got skipping near the end of the movie (the end of the disk). There was nothing wrong with the media. I use quality stuff.

Stop and think before you post next time.

#10.6 fergiej on 23 Nov 2004 - 13:19

Actually, you might want to do that, too. I burn Ritek 8X media at 8X all the time (I produce home movie DVD's). Not once have I had any trouble whatsoever with skipping. The only trouble I ever have is with media/player compatibility. I usually use -R's, but occasionally have to redo with +R's. The burner, the ability of your machine to stream the complete data to the drive, all of this plays a part. If you had skipping at the end of the movie, I would suggest your machine can't quite stream properly. You might want to check the mode the burner is using, which IDE port it's on, etc.

#11 stezo2k on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:00

damn.... havent long got my pioneer 108 dvd writer, wish it was SATA

#12 DodgeViper on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:19

I'm not going to buy a new DVD burner until they are able burn at 16x speed for DVD-R/W, DVD+R/W and dual layer and their all SATA.

(5 replies) #13 nw_raptor on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:28

I still dont see a point moving to SATA optical drives (other than the cable-related stuff).

And anyway, I have always had a question about SATA optical drives... How would you be able to boot off a SATA optical drive to start i.e Windows Setup? Does the BIOS somehow take care of that? Enlighten me please

#13.1 kagaku on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:37

The same way you boot off any other SATA drive, you set the BIOS to boot from SATA or SCSI (depends on your motherboard) and the rest is taken care of by the BIOS I'd assume.

#13.2 Skyfrog on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:37

Of course you can boot from SATA, otherwise how would you start your system from a SATA hard drive?

Serial ATA is backwards compatible with the older protocol. You can even get adapters for your old drives.

#13.3 Manksgloob on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:39

I know in some cases you had to load the driver first -- especially for RAID setups, but I do know that newer MSI mobos natively support SATA and emulate it like any older interface.

#13.4 nw_raptor on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:44

Good to know that. Thanks!

#13.5 Jugalator on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:58

"but I do know that newer MSI mobos natively support SATA and emulate it like any older interface"

My old Abit IS-7 mb also does this... I didn't even think of this hassle and considering it's among the first generation SATA motheboards I must've been lucky since I never checked if it had emulation support.

Works flawless without drivers when installing e.g. Windows XP.

#14 kagaku on 22 Nov 2004 - 21:37

I'm happy I put off buying the Plextor 712-SA for a few months. I'll definately be picking one of these up soon.

#15 Cube on 22 Nov 2004 - 22:16

SATA Cables pwn IDE

(2 replies) #16 GShapiro on 22 Nov 2004 - 22:30

I've has my PX-716A for about 2 weeks. In a word SWEET. Burns Maxell 8X DVD+R's at 10X. Will try some 12X media when I get hold of some. Don't think there is any 16X media out yet but I could be wrong.

The SATA version performs exactly like the IDE version. The higher transfer rate of SATA doesn't mean a thing especially for optical drives which transfer slower then hard drives. Plus we are talking burst speeds anyways. The samller cable's might be a plus for some people. I'd rather use my SATA's for a Raptor or two :-)

#16.1 moeburn on 22 Nov 2004 - 22:32

You do of course know that the speed rating on dvds is usually irrelevant?

#16.2 GShapiro on 22 Nov 2004 - 22:46

Of course I know all about speed ratings. That's why I made the point that I did. Some folks might think that a 150MB/s SATA interface will make their drives faster then an Ultra IDE interface which is not the case. If you choose SATA over IDE for your PX-716? choose it for the smaller cable or if you have no IDE ports left, not for any perceived speed gain.

Last edited by 1498 on 22 Nov 2004 - 22:59

#17 Jazza on 22 Nov 2004 - 23:31

Horrah. Onward with the dead of PATA

#18 GRex on 22 Nov 2004 - 23:32

Got a nice price too.

#19 jvstinboi on 22 Nov 2004 - 23:56

I think the point of moving optical drives over to SATA is about phasing out the PATA interface more than a speed boost or better airflow. With the advent of the faster, more efficient SATA interface, PATA has become unnecessary and redundant wastes of mobo real estate. Manufacturers are already beginning to decrease the number of IDE ports on their mobos. Gone are the days of the commerecially viable mobo w/ integrated PATA RAID controller. All the integrated-RAID mobos I've seen lately are SATA RAIDs only. IDE is further along a road that the PCI interface is also beginning to travel: abandonment. Matter of time before we see boards w/o IDE and PCI. Nice while they lasted, but I won't miss either.

#20 Another_Paul on 23 Nov 2004 - 00:27

I wonder if there is a downloadable firmware upgrade to make my Pioneer A06 a Dual Layer. It's been demoed as such at some tradeshow with a special firmware but can't find it anywhere

#21 Sporkguy on 23 Nov 2004 - 00:58

o/ w00t for SATA

#22 sodapop on 23 Nov 2004 - 01:11

I just, and I do mean just, bought the NEC 3500. I'm very sassyfied.

#23 Cadaver69 on 23 Nov 2004 - 02:01

I'm just curious what the buffer on this is. I didnt' see it listed in the press release

Edit: I reread the press release and it says the Buffer is 8Mbs

Last edited by 25671 on 23 Nov 2004 - 03:26

(2 replies) #24 dismuter on 23 Nov 2004 - 02:14

Isn't SATA also IDE?

#24.1 Skyfrog on 23 Nov 2004 - 05:42

Yes, IDE is a type of drive/controller. What it means is a drive that has the controller electronics built right onto the drive, instead of having to plug in a seperate ISA or PCI expansion card. The name IDE is owned by Western Digital though, so the name ATA is commonly used instead. However they are the same thing. SATA uses a serial interface instead of parallel, but as far as software is backwards compatible.

#24.2 wildk on 23 Nov 2004 - 10:19

You learn somthing everyday

I did not know about western digital owning the IDE name, but it was done as a joint venture with compaq, Western Digital and Control Data Corporation (Part of Seagate) in competition to IBM, However according to the Info i read the First HDD to incorporate Drive electronics was a Hardcard made by Quantum

History of IDE

#25 FrAxElAnK on 23 Nov 2004 - 05:05

there is Verbatim 16x +R media out there. MicroCenter and Staples have it. and i just got my NEC ND-3500A. arg

(2 replies) #26 Cansokid on 23 Nov 2004 - 06:35

I have yet to see any review saying that sata optical is any more reliable/faster/better than the current eide
How ever it will with out a doubt clean up some cables.

#26.1 daneel on 23 Nov 2004 - 08:13

What about interruptions?
I believe that even modern DVD drives can cause the machine to slow down when doing transfers so I wonder if a SATA optical drive would work like SCSI ones where it's always smooth.

#26.2 |Maxim| on 25 Nov 2004 - 04:28

SATA works a charm and dosent slow down when doing transfers, unline pata drives

(2 replies) #27 liykh001 on 23 Nov 2004 - 06:50

hot-plugged (plugged in or unplugged while the system is running).

Has anyone actually got a motherboard that will do this? My SATA motherboard say that it doesnt support hot plugnplay with Hard drives.

#27.1 doug_jnr on 23 Nov 2004 - 09:55

just did it with my asus a7n8xe and a 200gig sata drive and it came up cleanly. this is what event log said....dmio: Harddisk0 is re-online by PnP

#27.2 JimmyT on 23 Nov 2004 - 15:57

My hot-unplug works, hot-plug doesn't work.

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