SecuRec

The SecureRecording function is responsible for protecting your confidential information on optical discs. When a disc is being written, SecuRec asks you for a password. You’ll have to enter this password to read the written disc afterwards. You’ll require a special utility, available for download on the Plextor website, to read such a disc on another computer system.

Q-Check

This subsection is the most important one for users who are interested in evaluating the quality of the written discs – the latest models from Plextor offer numerous opportunities to do that. I won’t dwell long on the items of this subsection as you can refer to the review of the previous model, Plextor PX-712A, for details. I will only limit myself with those things which are new in the Plextor PX-716A.

TA Test

This test helps to evaluate the jitter of lands and pits for each length from 3T to 14T. If you’re familiar with the results the test station CD CATS shows on its output, I could compare this to the Land and Pit Histograms – the display of the results and the overall point of the test are the same in this case.

The diagram for each length is a normal or Gaussian distribution of the deviation of the lengths of pits and lands from the etalon. The measurements are performed in three areas of the disc: beginning, middle, end. This procedure is repeated on each layer of a dual-layer disc.

Let’s try to clear out what these diagrams show, exactly. So, the top point of the graph is the average value of land/pit lengths in this sampling. Ideally, this point should coincide with the etalon length (i.e. zero jitter), which is marked as the green vertical line in the diagram. If the top point of the graph doesn’t coincide with the green line, the quality score goes down – this is reflected in the Peak Shift parameter which shows the deviation of the average land/pit value from the etalon value. The width of each cone-shaped zone shows the deviation of the lengths (that is, the jitter value). If a zone is narrow, and the neighboring zones are far from each other, then the jitter rate is low. It means you have a high-quality disc. But if some of the neighboring areas overlap, then the deviations of two adjacent lengths (for example, 3T and 4T) are out of the norm. It would result in more errors at reading the disc.

This is a truly indispensable feature. Coupled with the Beta/Jitter results, TA Test helps to evaluate more accurately the jitter rate of the written disc and make deductions about the quality of the optical system of the drive. As you see, you get independent results on each of the lengths here rather than just an averaged jitter rate of all the lengths.

These have been the basic and the most interesting functions of the new optical drive from Plextor. Now we can proceed to the practical part of this review to see how this device performs in tests.