PX-716A Availibility Thread

[dodecahedron]

What a fucking POS. Plextor needs to learn that your supposed to make drives better than their predecessor’s not worse.

i think this post from aviationwiz is an historic event!

[aviationwiz]

Buy.com has lowered the preorder price to $138.88 shipped to the US!

Of course, I am sure the pre-orders will slow way down after people see the disappointing scans!

MB

Down to $130.99 now.

[MadBurner]

Buy.com has lowered the preorder price to $138.88 shipped to the US!

Of course, I am sure the pre-orders will slow way down after people see the disappointing scans!

MB

Down to $130.99 now.

Well my total cost included the shipping as well

MB

[DVD_ADDICT]

The 716A is available at Best Buy for $179.00 retail. Check this thread from the Plextor forum site at cdfreaks.com
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=111797

[alchip80]

Ok , may need a firmware update. however, it appears that his system was not on the up and up.

Quote Jamos:

"ok my problem seemed to be my secondary pci controller was setting the drive in multiword dma2 mode for some strange reason instead on udma4 mode. Put it on my motherboard controller got up in the 15x speeds took 6:10 to write (not much better than 12x if you ask me). "

Also you will notice that he was trying TY02 which is 8x burned at 16x. which should be corrected by an update.

[aviationwiz]

[MadBurner]

The 716A is available at Best Buy for $179.00 retail. Check this thread from the Plextor forum site at cdfreaks.com
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=111797

That's what we have been discussing for the past few hours

MB

[MadBurner]

What a fucking POS. Plextor needs to learn that your supposed to make drives better than their predecessor’s not worse.

i think this post from aviationwiz is an historic event!

Yep! He will have one shortly

MB

[aviationwiz]

Just got a reply, it's better than some replies I get from tech support lines, but not the best, I suppose I should wait for more info before jumping on them, but I'm still not impressed so far.

Warren,
Each and every drive release from drive manufacturers will have it's issue with certain customer bases and the media they can purchase, we test and test and do extensive media testing in an attempt to give you the best drive possible. As has been discussed over and over we do not manufacturer the disc and cannot control the quality of the media in the market, all over the internet there are warnings from users who have the 'recommended' media but have a lot of errors - but in our testing we do not with the 'same' media from the 'same' manufacturer, go figure. Sorry, we don't want to try to explain this again so let us answer your questions.

Can you comment on this?
We did above, thank you.

Was it simply rushed, and a firmware upgrade would fix this in the future, or do you think that is a lemon?
No this unit was not rushed and no it is not a lemon, thank you.

If there is anything else we can do for you just let us know.

Plextor Technical Support -*
****When replying to technical support, please do not erase the previous messages from your emails. This will help us to stay up to date on everything you have done beforehand.******


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Warren Goldstein [mailto:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX]
Sent: Thu 10/21/2004 5:31 PM
To: Tech Support
Subject: PX-716A


Hello,

I've been waiting for the PX-716A for a bit, and have been waiting for the release, since I expected it to improve on the 712 which was great for me.

It appears that Best Buy has just started to get some in stock, and someone picked them up, used Taiyo Yuden 8x dvd+r (T02) which is a Plextor Recomended media, and obtained the following results:
http://forum.cdfreaks.com/showpost.php? ... stcount=26

Can you comment on this? Was it simply rushed, and a firmware upgrade would fix this in the future, or do you think that is a lemon? Needless to say, this is not a very good first impression of the drive for the 'optical drive/media freak' community to see.

Thanks,
Warren

[dodecahedron]

i liked the "thank you" at the end of the answers.

i'm surprised he didn't say: "now go buy a Plextor drive. thank you."

[Halc]

A sure sign of a company going bad:

"We are right, our buying customers are wrong."

That's not a motto that keeps a company winning over new and retaining old customers.

Unless of course, they are in the pharmaceutical business :)

rgds,
halc

[Ian]

I'm just imagining all the reviewers running out to Best Buy today and whipping out a craptastic review for Monday, just so they can yell "exclusive". Maybe I should start taking bets on a. when we'll see a review b. who did it and c. how crappy it is.

Sorry.. it's just been one of those days.

[MadBurner]

I just wonder how many emails Plextor support has received since yesterday!

Nice one Avi

MB

[dolphinius_rex]

I'm just imagining all the reviewers running out to Best Buy today and whipping out a craptastic review for Monday, just so they can yell "exclusive". Maybe I should start taking bets on a. when we'll see a review b. who did it and c. how crappy it is.

Sorry.. it's just been one of those days.

Put me down for Anandtech as the first and as for crappiness.... I won't go there

[aviationwiz]

Here it is on Best Buy's website:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... pe=product

[VEFF]

Here it is on Best Buy's website:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... pe=product

About time (not that I am buying one at that price) - they have had the external version on their site for at least three days now.

[Ian]

The way I see it, Best Buy knows they're the only place wit it in stock righ now (mine didn't have it) and they're gonna charge a premium for it. It sucks, but that's the way things go. Give it a week or two and you'll probably be able to get it for $40-$50 less.

[shimman]

i hoped that plextor made 716 much better than 712, but i guess not....maybe they still do have quality control problems like 712

bestbuy stores near me all have 716 in stock, but @ 179usd, i am not interested. 3500 is now about 75usd shipped, i wonder why i should get 716 @ more than twice the price of 3500 or 108; even at 130usd, it is way over priced imho

[MadBurner]

Hello,

Best Buy retail store will be one of the first to carry this product. There is a very high demand for this unit and they are on allocation at this time. The first shipment of 716A were recently sent to Best Buy and we are currently waiting on the next shipment scheduled for mid November. Please stay tuned!

Thank you for your interest in Plextor products.

Plextor Sales

I received this email back today from Plextor. This might explain why my local Best Buy didn't have a single Plextor drive on their shelves! In fact, the only drive they had was the 16x Pioneer!

MB

[alexnoe]

Well, even though the Pioneer 16x is only a 12x drive, it works at least!

[aviationwiz]

Apparently the situation may not be all that bad. The PX-716A is reporting a much higher error rate than the PX-712A, so comparing scans in the 716 & 712 is, currently, not possible.

[KenW]

We need to have second look at cd freaks 716 thread, it seems that problem with poor burns was not poor burns but that the 716a with px tools seems to have pi/po scan problem im some case it looks like the level are as much as 50% to 60% higher then the same disk scanned on 712a. This is also shown by a disk from my friends new 716a that scanned on my benQ and nu tech drives I got max pi under 100 but he got max pi on px tools scan of over 450.

[MadBurner]

MadBurner:

You need to have second look at cd freaks 716 thread, it seems that problem with poor burns was not poor burns but that the 716a with px tools seems to have pi/po scan problem im some case it looks like the level are as much as 50% to 60% higher then the same disk scanned on 712a. This is also shown by a disk from my friends new 716a that scanned on my benQ and nu tech drives I got max pi under 100 but he got max pi on px tools scan of over 450.

I haven't said anything along these lines

MB

[KenW]

MadBurner:

Im sorry I was going post about the email you were talking about and got side tracked then posted the look at the cd freaks posts message not even noticing i had put your name at the top, I am sorry. I have edit it.

ok here is email message That was for you

This may explain the reason after we saw the not till nov 1st finding drives in best buy, my friend Mark who bought one today said BB had only 5 left he got one. It was all I could do not run over an get one of last 4, but im waiting for newegg to get the oem so I can get drive with out all extra stuff to add cost.

PS to all

Jamos just posted on another thread that plextor will release fw 1.01 soon and it will have pi/po level fix as well a fix for problems with 16x burning. How he knows this I dont know But usually Jamos's info is pretty good.

[dolphinius_rex]

Jamos just posted on another thread that plextor will release fw 1.01 soon and it will have pi/po level fix as well a fix for problems with 16x burning. How he knows this I dont know But usually Jamos's info is pretty good.

Maybe Aviationwiz's letter campaign worked?