Single-Write (Non-Rewritable) Media

Now let’s examine the quality of DVD discs I burned in the new Plextor. Single-write formats come first.

Plextor PX-716A burning/reading a 4x DVD-R disc
 

The burning was done successfully – the fluctuation of speed in the diagram is nothing else but the consequence of the dynamic laser power correction all modern optical drives perform. The subsequent reading of the written disc provoked no problems, either. The single slowdown on the outermost tracks shouldn’t worry us much as it is due to a minor failure during reading. Now let’s check out the quality of the resulting disc and see if there are any changes since the previous drive from Plextor?

That’s simply an excellent performance! Plextor’s drives still hold the crown of the best optical drives for writing DVD discs. The older model already performed excellently, but the new device improves this performance even more – the total number of PI errors has decreased from 75,146 to 6,879. I should acknowledge, though, that there is a single spike of PI errors on the disc written by the PX-712A. Without this spike, the difference would be much smaller. Now let’s examine the quality of the disc written by the newer model in more detail:

Beta/Jitter and TA Test (Inner, Middle, Outer)
for the disc burned by Plextor PX-716A
 
 

The asymmetry is normal, with minor fluctuations which fit into the acceptable range. The graph shows quite clearly the moments where Running OPC comes into play. The jitter is normal, both in peaks and in average. The results of TA Test are indicative of a smaller jitter rate in the middle of the disc – its deviations are somewhat bigger on the innermost and outermost tracks. The overall result is very good, though.

So, we’ve got a high-quality disc at 4x speed, with a low level of errors and good Beta/Jitter showings.