Plextor 24x DVD Writers - PX-880SA and PX-880U

[Ian]

Plextor LLC has officially announced its new 24x DVD writers. Along with the internal PX-880SA, the company is introducing an external USB model, the PX-880U. The two drives support PlexUTILITES, PlexERASE and LightScribe and are capable of 24x DVD±R, 12x DVD±R DL and 12x DVD-RAM writing speeds.

http://www.cdrlabs.com/News/plextor-ann ... iters.html

Plextor PX-880SA.png (34.45 KiB) Viewed 18941 times

If I had to fathom a guess, I'd say that the two are based on the Lite-On iHAS424. Thoughts?

PX-880SA - http://www.plextoramericas.com/index.ph ... rw/px880sa

PX-880U - http://www.plextoramericas.com/index.ph ... rw/px-880u

[Dartman]

I think I'd rather stick with the new 7240 series drives. I hate the Mediatek based drives for the most part. If they don't charge a huge premium for it LiteOn fans wanting to use Plextools will like it I'm sure.

[Ian]

It's not a huge premium, but they want about $15-$20 more for the PX-880SA over the iHAS424. The inclusion of PlexUTILITIES almost justifies it though.

[Dartman]

Well I can agree on that part, most decent utilities are at least 20 bucks these day. Do they still have to make 2 passes to get all the data?

[Ian]

All the data? Such as PI/PIF and Jitter? If I remember right, Lite-On drives can do both in one pass, but Plextor still has the two tests separate in Plexutilities.

[PX-880 is a lite-on]

Plextor LLC has officially announced its

its? its?!? Hardly. Plextor has announced another rebadged drive!

amazon.com/dp/B002EE5Z3W/

It's not a huge premium

misrepresentation is not a huge problem?

The inclusion of PlexUTILITIES almost justifies it though.

This is neither horseshoes nor hand grenades!

At least my PX-716 is still going strong

[Ian]

I applaud your efforts, but I think its too late. Shinano Kenshi has licensed out the Plextor name and the high bidder for the American market is PLDS.. aka Lite-On.

[PX-880 is a lite-on]

Shinano Kenshi has licensed out the Plextor name

Would you please provide a supporting citation for that?

(wiki*edia doesn't count as authoritative on anything)


thanks

:_)

[Ian]

There hasn't been anything official, but if you look at the product offerings of the various subsidiaries, they've pretty much gone their own way. It really didn't click with me until I saw Plextor LLC's new address and noticed it was the same as Lite-On's.

[bitaddict]

Below is an official statement about about the current state of Plextor and their relationship with PLDS. The statement was found on the Plextor website.

In 2008, leveraging PLDS (Philips & Lite-On Digital Solutions) infrastructure, Plextor US operations appointed PLDS as the sole distributor to promote and sell Plextor branded products into the US, Canada, and other American continent countries. Plextor remains a unique brand of optical disc drives and multimedia products owned by Shinano Kenshi in Japan.

I hope this helps.

[Dartman]

If they still own the name does no good if all they are doing is letting liteOn put their name on basically LiteOn drives with a different FW installed
I remember when you paid more for a Plextor drive and there was a reason, they were better built, backed up, and just worked better then any other drive out there. Especially when the best burner you could get was a CDRW of some sort. I still have a Plextor 24x I think and several of their SCSI cd readers from back when I was starting out.
The newest drives just don't have the quality or anything else like the old true Plex units but I'm sure some will still buy them on name alone.

[PlextorRep]

Thanks for all of your comments and discussions! I work with Plextor and wanted to be sure and let you know that while Lite-On is the distributor, Plextor has it's own QA and design team and does all of the R&D for their drives. Thanks!

[Ian]

It looks like Plextor will be offering the Lite-On based drives in Europe now too:

http://www.cdrlabs.com/News/plextor-eur ... riter.html

[Dartman]

SO, after all this discussion has anybody bought and tried one with the original FW installed and is it better then the LiteOn equivalent in burning or playback?

[Ian]

I'm not sure. I don't have a 24x DVD writer from either company.

[hoxlund]

Just installed my brand new 880SA, the LG I bought back in Feburary already went to crap

Any cool hacked firmware for the 880sa?

[Dartman]

I think you might be able to cross it back to a LiteOn then use whatever they have for it but I haven't really looked into it since the last post on this quite a while ago.
I'd try it as is and maybe backup the firmware then look at CEFreaks and see what they're doing with them these days. If Plextor did anything cool with the firmware it MAY work better on their version then the LiteOn ones, hard to say.

[Ian]

Plextor didn't do anything with the firmware. The only semi-cool thing is the ability to use PlexUtilities with it.

Keep in mind that the firmware on these is encrypted to make it harder to cross flash them. I'm guessing the folks at CD Freaks have found a way around this though. Otherwise you can send it to me and I can do it for you.

[KTL]

Make a backup of the EEPROM and firmware files first before flashing any hacked firmware, utilities found here. You can use a patched 1.12 firmware from here.

With the latest Flash Utility, you can crossflash between Plextor and LiteOn (or any other clones) without any problems. The 880SA is an iHAS424 A in essence, but you can crossflash to a iHAS324 A, iHAS524 A, etc., as long as it's within the 'A'-series chipset. When you see the 880SA in the Flash Utility, make sure there's an asterisk (*) next to the Flash ID, since without it, the crossflash may not work. One guy was convinced it was the drive and/or tool and refused to try anything anyone suggested since his preconfigured HP computer couldn't have been the source of any problems.

[Scour]

I remember Plextor and Lite-On hate eachother, like the users of both brand do

But ok, I think the time for DVD is almost over, not because BD gets a bit cheaper, most ppl use HDDs for backing up or transport data

[Jim Garrison]

If you want a good drive I would recommend an LG. I have had nothing but good experiences with these drives only about 1 error out of 100 max.
I have had a 24x LG Super Multi DVD-RW Drive over 2 years and it works almost flawlessly.

I would also recommend getting a BD-R Drive if you plan on buying a new drive as the increased capacity is not only beneficial for data storage but also the compatibility with the the HD movies is awesome for playback with the now pretty much standard flat-screen computer LCD.

[Scour]

Well, I think my drives will last a bit and I never need to buy a DVD-drive again

I don´t view many movies, german TV often sends only upscaled movies/series, it´s maybe a bit better than pure SD, but not real HD-quality. So there are atm no reasons for me to get a BD-drive.

[JJR512]

Sorry to dig up an older thread, but I'm interested in the PX-880U.

I currently have a PX-716U. When I turn it on, it usually makes a god-awful whining noise for several seconds before quieting down. That's with no disc in it. It also fails to recognize some DVDs (commercial movies) which my father's similar HP drive has no trouble with. It's maybe about 10% of movies I put in that it won't recognize, but always the same ones, so it's not some random error. I don't know what it is about those particular discs that it doesn't like, but it just ejects them after several seconds of trying to read them. Today, it also turned a DVD+R DL disc into a coaster when I was trying to burn some video I shot and put together with iMovie/iDVD. This was the first dual-layer disc I'd ever tried to burn with this drive.

Anyway, I think it's time for a new drive. I haven't given up on Plextor yet, but I suppose that as a Mac user who therefore can't use PlexUtilities, there's really no reason for me to stick with Plextor. Nevertheless, I think the 880U is one of the nicer drives out there, both in terms of specs as well as appearance. (I don't like the look of drives that have different right and left sides, which I guess they do in case you stand it up vertically, but it looks stupid to me.)

It wasn't clear to me whether Plextor US's drives are unique, or if they are actually Lite-On drives in different cases. If Plextors are simply rebadged Lite-Ons, what is the Lite-On equivalent model to the PX-880U?

Are there any drives other than the PX-880U, or equivalent Lite-On, that anyone would care to recommend as being better? I'm looking for an external, full-speed (i.e., not an 8x USB-powered portable drive), LiteScribe-compatible, DVD±R DL burner.

[Ian]

I'm pretty sure the PX-880U is based on the iHAS424 like the PX-880SA. The Plextor has a nicer looking bezel but that's really it.

Honestly, I'd hesitate to buy a 24x DVD writer that uses USB. You're really pushing the limits of the interface and I've found that even with 20x DVD writers, there are issues with some chipsets that prevent you from writing at the maximum speed.

Samsung and LG also make some decent external DVD writers. Since you're on a Mac though, you may want to look for one that uses FireWire.

[JJR512]

Yeah, the Plextor is much nicer-looking than the Lite-On. I see some Sony external drives that look absolutely identical to the external Lite-On, except for color.

The only Samsungs I saw at Newegg were the portable kind. Maybe I need to find another place to shop, I don't know. I also didn't see any there, from any brand, that use FireWire. I'm not too concerned about that, though. My Mac is a laptop, and it's easier for me to just keep all my stay-at-home peripherals connected to a USB hub, that way I only have to plug in one thing (besides power).

I do wish my PX-716UF wasn't acting up...