PX-708A Booktype Changing- Make your voice heard!!!

generally speaking, sony and philips players, as they supported philips from the beggining. at starting models, get a sony 330 or 430 and you will be ok. At mid-range, philips 963sa was a good model, and at high rande it's sony 999. Check www.dvdrhelp.com (changed to www.videohelp.com) for other users tested other machines. I think that pioneer models maybe don't play all of your disks.

I have a Pioneer 656A that plays anything, burnt on anything that you put in it...

Interesting that Plextor won't provide support for bitsetting which is known to solve compatibility problems but they are at the same time now so worried about compatibility that they are waiting with releasing a DL writer for this reason (or so they say):

Not everyone in DVD recording circles is taking the DL plunge. Plextor, by contrast, unveiled news of shipping and forthcoming 12X DVD recorders in the same mid-May timeframe, but according to VP of sales and marketing Howard Wing, the company has no plans to release a DL drive. Wing cites compatibility concerns on the playback side. "We believe the expectation of the customer is such that if I record a DL disc, I ought to be able to play it on my player or DVD-ROM drive," Wing says, "and I think that's a fair assumption. Until we can guarantee that, we won't release a DL drive."
http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/R...ArticleID=8579

Without a bitsetting tool they will have to wait a long time with a release of a DL writer...

Hi,

I sent them a message some days ago asking for the tool due to compatibility reasons, as I have a Samsung 616F DVD-ROM that doesn't recogn DVD+R discs.
As in February they said the subject was under consideration, lets hope (???) they come to a favourable solution. But it seems it is taking long...

same problem here. i have a teac dvd-rom 16x (model with 512kb cache) that is officially not reading dvd+r. It reads the majority of my dvd+r's, but some disks don't be recognized. so a bittsetting tool could fix it. DL technology is the future, the future before blu-ray and HDdvd. Plextor has lost the path. I don't care for 12x burning, since most of my disks are burned @ 4x, but i want more features. I am happy when burning at 8x.

Don't get your hopes up. I emailed them this week about the same issue and then I found this forum. My reply:

"Plextor has no plans to support this feature."

That's it. The whole reason I bought this drive in Dec was for 8x speed. At the time my old audiovox DVD player would play anything you threw at it. I decided I wanted to upgrade my system, got a top of the line panasonic home theater, and now it won't play DVD+R (even says so in the manual, I think it's a competition thing with Phillips, Sony, etc. as older generation panasonic DVD players did just fine.) So now I'm mad at Plextor and Panasonic. Not to mention it looks like 8x DVD-R is a pipe dream with this drive as well. You can forget the 12x speed drive. I almost got a lite-on drive, man, wish I had...

Is there nobody in the community that has the ability to do that?

No probably not because you would need to know a secret command.

above all, what a silly answer is it, that the Plextor guys give: 'Changing the book type is not within the standard'...? Neither is gigarec (OK, that's not DVD...)

I already mailed them about this. No answer.

maybe some merciful soul at plextor could leak the info to hack a firmware?

if plextor added booktype changing in thier firmware i definatly would buy one! and if they ever come out with a dual layer burner they may want to think about bitsetting cause i have two and without bitsetting none of my home dvd players will play them!

I just emailed Plextor; I was quite frank about my feelings toward their lack of attention to their customers.

I own a PX-708A and everytime the bitsetting issue is brought up, I deeply regret my purchase. Not only was the PX-708A the most expensive unit available at the time, there were other drives that supported bitsetting available at less than half the cost of the Plextor unit.

I'll admit that at the time of purchase, I was uninformed about bitsetting and new to the DVDR scene, thus, it was not an issue. I assumed that Plextor would eventually support bitsetting as the drive had only recently been released in the US. Unfortunately, I was wrong and now face having to purchase a unit that does support bitsetting.

This is really a sad issue. Why don't they leave it up to the customer?

Maybe the next one will support bitsetting. Otherwise I will have to buy some NEC or Litey stuff.

I really don't get their "staunch" refusal to implement this....
From a technical standpoint I would guess it's a very simple thing to do in firmware...So there must be some "political" issue surrounding this.

Thats why I dont like politics. Maybe some great head at Plextor said "Bitsetting is useless/senseless/whatever" and now cant admit that he was wrong.

Could this be a typo in your sig ?
The Plextor PX-W4012A can't read DVD's as it is just a CDR-writer.
My eye feld on this because I have the same Plextor PX-W4012A in my system and it sure as hell can't read DVD's !

I'll let this be known to South Korean users. They are the best spammers in the world.

e-mail on the way...

Let's just say that I will NEVER buy another Plextor. Their lack of customer service has taught me NOT to buy from them ever again. My next upgrade will be a Lite On or NEC. Plextor used to lead the way. Everybody wanted to be like Plextor. Plextor's problem is that they don't want to be like anybody. Competition, that's what it's all about. Vote with you dollar$ (or euro$, or pound$, or whatever your country u$e$).

Plextor

l7one2 : I have had absolutely NO issues whatsoever with my 2 sony DVD players.
yes they're stand-alone's and yes i use Memorex DVD+R's and its quite seamless.

i can also tell you that XboX and PS2's have no problems reading these disc's either.
(im using cloneDVD for my backups)

Which is the no.1 then ?

Email Sent. They definitely need to work on their stuff if they plan on getting back into the #1 spot.(at least in my book) I have always bought plextors. Burners and CDRoms. I know I've owned over 8 or 9 drives of theirs. I still have 2 SCSI CDRoms of theirs in the closet. I didn't think I would ever buy anything but plextor, but things change I guess. They really need to get on the ball.

My experience with Plextor recently has also been pretty poor-- coaster city, terse replies from tech support, etc. I still have my first 4Plex Plus drive in service and it's sad to think that after all these years of exceptional quality that they've been reduced to the level of everyone else.

Hmmm... maybe Lite-On will see some business from me soon.

-- Steve