Plextor PX-716A Enhanced Functionality

Now we can talk about the functionality of the Plextor PX-716A at length. It partially overlaps with the analogous capabilities of the PX-712A, so users who know the previous model well may pay attention only to the items added in the new drive.

Traditionally for drives of the Plextor brand, the user is offered a wide scope of various settings, embracing all the basic parameters of the device: the speed of reading optical media (you can forget about third-party programs for “slowing down” the drive), the disc spin-down time, and the independent volume control over each channel when reproducing audio.

The more subtle settings allow you to enable or disable PoweRec technology (you’ll learn shortly why you may want to do that), to disable the buffer underrun protection (the practical value of this item is unclear for me) and others.

The items pertaining to AutoStrategy technology are the most interesting, though. This feature is new to the PX-716A, since the previous version of the Sanyo chipset didn’t support it. So, it makes sense to dwell upon it for a while. Since AutoStrategy is part of Intelligent Recording, I will discuss it as such.