Rating: 
Summary: soso
Review: its a good drive, a bit pricy and bulky. it worked wonderfly for me for about 3 months then it had a hard time reading media and made dvd coasters. getting it to read anything now is like playing on a slot machine. im still working with tech support to rectify the problem.
Rating: 
Summary: Survived a nastry fall, still makes perfect DVD's
Review: My Plextor PX-708UF was accidently pulled from a shelf and fell a foot and a half onto a hard desk. I thought that was going to do it in. But remarkably, it still works perfectly. I've yet to burn a coaster.
I can now add "rugged" to the ongoing list of accolades offered by myself and other users. I doubt I will ever buy anything other than a Plextor burner.
Rating:
Summary: Direct from the manufacturers website:
Review: The Plextor PX-708UF delivers the fastest performance in dual formats: 8X DVD+R write, 4X DVD-R write, 4X DVD+RW rewrite, 2X DVD-RW rewrite, and 12X DVD-ROM read. In addition to recording, rewriting and reading DVD discs in dual formats, the PX-708UF supports 40X CD-R write, 24X CD-RW rewrite and 40X CD-ROM read speeds. All in one drive. Create a 4.7 GB disc on DVD media in about 8 minutes.You won't find a better DVD recordable drive to create, edit and share customized DVDs and CDs with friends and family using video, photo, audio and data. Capture, archive, organize and personalize your home movies and photos on DVD, VCD, mini DVD and SVCD. Create photo slide shows, complete with transitions and music. Burn your photos to Video CD to play on most DVD players. You can also back up and archive 4.7 GB on a single-sided recordable DVD disc or create photo albums for viewing with DVD players and much more. (Box Contents) 8-in-1 Combo drive: 8X DVD+R, 4X DVD-R, 4X DVD+RW, 2X DVD-RW, 12X DVD-ROM, 40X CD-R, 24X CD-RW AND 40X CD-ROM
Lossless linking technology enables users to perform basic editing tasks directly on the DVD disc
Buffer Under Run Proof technology prevents buffer under run errors
PoweRec technology is a sophisticated write strategy providing superior quality recording at maximum speed for your chosen media
Support DVD+RW background format
Support DVD+VR format
Horizontal or vertical mounting orientation
Black CD tray minimizes jitter
OS Support - Windows® 98SE/Me/2000/XP™
Mac OS 9.1 or above
One-year full warranty (parts and labor)
Unlimited toll-free tech support
Minimum Systems Requirements CPU: Pentium® III 700MHz or above
HDD 800 MB - 1 GB free space for copying CD to CD image
6 GB free space for DVD authoring RAM 128 MB
Monitor Display Resoution 1024 X 768 at 16-bit color
OS Support - Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP™
Mac OS 9.1 or above
Interface: Dual IEEE 1394 and Hi-Speed USB
Rating:
Summary: Snazzy
Review: There's not much you can say about something that works like its supposed to. I unpacked it, plugged it in, and away I go. I bought this as a second drive to facilitate copying. My existing DVD/CD software (Sonic version 7) recognized it immediately. The software that comes with the Plextor is Roxio version 6. I have not installed Roxio 6 over the Sonic because of Roxio 6's bad reputation. On another computer I had Roxio 5, and it was awful and eventually stopped recognizing my CD drive, and I had to uninstall it and install Nero. If I could take away one-half star from the Plextor because of the software, I would do so.
Rating:
Summary: The best 8x dvd burner on the market!!!!!
Review: This dvd burner is the best, it is fast, efficient, and I have burned over 50 movies without ANY coasters!!!!!! I have used mostly TDK and Memorex dvd-r and dvd+r both brands of disk working wonderfully.
I started my burning experience with an external TDK 4x burner (440n) and ran into nothing but problems. I only managed to burn two viewable movies out of a stack of 10. The problem mainly being with dvd-r disks, it would encode and start to burn to the disk and then the burner would freeze up and an error message would pop up. I called TDK concerning this and they tried to blame it on my pc at first, after informing them my computer is brand new, they then blamed it on the burner driver and told me to update it on their website, I did however this never fixed the problem and I had accumulated 8 coasters by then. I returned that piece of junk and purchased the 8x external plextor model and I have been in heaven ever since!!! It burns dvd so fast it takes roughly about 15 minutes to burn a two hour movie . It also comes with a stand so you can store it on its side for space saving. Software used to burn movies: Dvd Shrink and Nero v.6
Rating:
Summary: ToTally AWESOME !!!!!
Review: This is product is TOTALLY AWESOME!
I Burned my 2 hour home movie in less than 4 minutes!!!!
Perfect quality exactly like the original!!
Well worth the $$$
I HIGHLY Reccomend this product !!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: The Best Kept Burning Secret
Review: Wait. Do not buy this if you want to have perfect DVD copies of movies. If you want that then get the Sony DRX-700UL Double Layer FireWire/USB 2.0 External DVD±RW Drive. That drive allows you to perfectly copy what is called DVD9. DVD9 is what Hollywood uses to make those discs. In the burning world we have DVD-R + R media called DVD5. DVD 5 is around the half the size of a DVD9. This means that when you backup your movies to DVD-R, you need to compress with programs like DVDshrink in conjunction with Nero Burning Rom. Most films can be compressed or DVDs stripped to produce 80% to 100% quality viewing. However on some films they are so big and fast that sometimes the compression can be down as low as 60%. Now 60% compression with DVD Mpeg is not bad but 80% is quite acceptable and 99% of films work great on standard DVD-R. So burning with this hardware is no problem - quality movies is the end result, but if you want pure 100% quality, then be prepared to pay for it with Double Layer technology. Check out the price of the Sony and then check out the prices of the Double Layer DVD Discs. Haha - as you can see the Discs are the catch because they cost a bomb - but anyway you have a right to know that this technology exists and also that it is easier to use (Direct copy; no compression).
Nero Burning Rom comes bundled with this package nd is 99.9% effective but has a tendency to corrupt now again simply because it has a vast configuration system. Nero is a core burning tool. This means that several backup packages out there will actually find Nero on install and use it for burning. One example is DVDshrink that runs Nero in the background while backing up DVD movies on DVD-R. I/O errors with these programs, including DVD Decrypter, are usually the result of a configuration problem with Nero. One example is updating your Plextor firmware. Sometimes this requires you to reinstall Nero. This problem however is the only bug I have found with Nero. Just on the side - I highly recommend Imation, Memorex or Verbatim as relatively cheap good second class media (80% or higher burn success rate). DVD is still in its early days of development and some media is garbage so don't blame Nero or the Plextor if you make coasters (half burned DVD-R Discs that are useless to you) with this software. I also recommend a healthy supply of at least 3 DVD-RW Discs for TESTING your burning so that you NEVER make a coaster and waste money. Okay, now back to Nero. Nero is the most configurable burning tool out there while Nero Express is for those who do not know a thing about burning and works like a Wizard. A word of advice is to stick with the Rom and learn it without using the Wizard. You can choose from burning 12 CD formats and 6 DVD formats, including several variations of each format. There is not a Disc format you can not Burn with this program. The Plextor burners have great hardware based error correction systems and in conjunction with the Nero software make a perfect burn almost every time. Nero also happens to be extremely fast, if not the fastest out there, however fast is also in terms of how fast your burner is, but the software package requires little to no processing before a 8GB DVD is being pulled onto your HD. You can create ISOs with Nero and even use Nero to open up ISOs so you can read the content. There is an amazing amount of free software out there that uses this burner as their base and rightly so. It is the best burning software out there at this time of writing. Also the hardware comes bundled with Pinnacle Systems Media Studio 8 (a full DVD authoring program).
Now to the hardware itself. A USB2 connection at the back means top seed copying to and from the HD. There is a firewire connection if you want to use it and also audio out with volume control. What makes this DVD+-R X 8 (with RW and CD burning capability) speed burner so good is that it is light and yet built like a rock. You can take this anywhere with you although it is about 3/5th smaller than a PS2 so a nice little backpack is ideal for transport. Its error correcting is by far the best out there and I have burned maybe 800+ DVDs without any problems with it today except for bad media.
Pros:
- Take it anywhere.
- Best DVD5 burner out there.
- Not very noisy.
- Nice software bundle.
Cons:
- Price.
- Bit big.
Rating: 
Summary: Plextor starting to skimp?
Review: When getting a writer, be it CD or DVD, I always look to Plextor first. They are the leaders, and the rest follow. But when I received the 708UF, I was a bit disappointed. The unit comes equipped with a small fan that emits a high-pitched whine, even when the unit is idle. Since I'm using an external unit just so I can relocate my noisy computer to another room, this is a problem to me. If this won't bother you, stop reading here. The reason for the fan must be that the unit needs cooling, of course. But why have it run all the time? It should have been real easy to limit it's operation to when the unit is working. Or, even better, get rid of the cheesy plastic box that's housing the 708A and USB logic and use an aluminium box instead. You'd have gotten better durability, looks and cooling in one go. No, the unit may function very well, but that fan must go.
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