Some days ago I promised an answer of Plextor regarding the SafeDisc 2 issue. Today I received an explanation. I received a pretty long mail from Plextor's Engineering Manager and I've translated almost the entire mail, so you will get a clear view on Plextor.
Here's what he wrote (translated from Dutch):
First some info about Plextor. Plextor belongs to Shinano Kenshi. This is a very traditional Japanese company that is specialized in the development and production of some hi-tech products. The CD-ROM drives and Recorders are on the market by the name of Plextor. For this, they started three companies, Plextor Japan , Plextor USA and Plextor Europe. These companies have the task to take care of sales, support and service in the three parts of the market. The products are the same, but bundled media and software, and the service and also software utilities have differences. |
Plextor is unique because it's a specialized company with a small amount of products in comparisation to competitors. Therefor Plextor never announces new products, just because they
want to stay in front of competitors.
Plextor has always been concentrated on the niche market: professional and semi professional users, who demand high quality, speed and durability. The last years, Plextor noticed that more and more 'normal' people buy Plextor products, because they also want the quality of a Plextor drive.
More then it's competitors is Plextor busy with engeneering and development to guarantee
the great perfomance of it's drive and to deliver the best of the best of the used components (pick-up's, chipsets). For many manufacturers it's enough to have a 12x recorder. For Plextor that's not enough. Plextor drives are able to do whatever is technically possible with the used parts. (high speed reading of XA discs, perfect quality at high speed DAE, support for different media etc.)
Besides that, Plextor always informed their customers the best way possible, all specifications given are extensively tested and confirmed, products announced are at that
moment in production and not after three months, and something that works for 90% is not
officially supported by Plextor. Also is Plextor very strict if it comes to official standards
of technologies, so no questions about 90/99 minutes media etc.
RAW writing is a technology that is not officially supported by Plextor, when it works
on Plextor drives, then it's luck. There are many reasons why Plextor doesn't support
RAW writing, but let's not get in that discussion. Plextor just wants to make clear that
there is one reason to use RAW write, and that's copying of protected CD's. All the rest can easily be done with normal software, and Plextor doesn't want to be associated with copying of protected CD's.
After the postings on CD Freaks, Plextor did an enormous amount of tests and gathered a lot
of information. They tried all kinds of combinations of hardware (Plextor drives) and
software (firmware). Their main conclusion is that different firmwares have no effect on the
end result. The idea that older firmware gives better results has been proven incorrect. Plextor also wants to tell you, that there is NO connection or deal with ANY company to protect their technology with Plextor firmware.
The used firmware upgrade programs are different in Europe and the USA. Because of that the Self Extracting differ in file size, but the real binary firmwares are identical.
Because Plextor can not guarantee that older firmwares work without any problems on newer
drives (can you imagine how much time Plextor spend on quality tests ?) Plextor recently decided to remove older firmwares of the PX-W1210A (no one downloaded these files anymore, and newer versions are much better) When there are still people who are not sure about this, then Plextor is happy to return those files on their site. BTW: the version TLA030x only works with firmware 1.05 and higher, installation of a lower verion has been disabled on these drives. This all to protected the 'normal' consumer against possible errors.
Conclusion: Plextor has in NO way tried to dis inform customers, and the postings on CD Freaks are not based on anything true. We really think it's a bad case because Plextor has been given a bad name for a lot of existing and potential customers, and because the good name of Plextor has been damaged by postings on your site.
Well I think his e-mail explains a lot, Plextor does not officially support RAW writing, because it's not an official standard or technology, and because RAW writing is only used to copy protected CD's, and they don't want to be associated with that. (something very normal to me, although they forget that some people DO need to backup things). It also seems that Plextor took our com plaints very serious and took time and effort to clear this issue.
Some extra notes from me; I mailed Plextor as soon as N.B. posted the original message about Plextor and SafeDisc 2, and at that time I received no answer. A few days ago, I received the name of a Plextor employee from someone I'm really gratefull for this (you know who you are) and was able to mail him. This time I got a quick and polite reply.
We always suspected something, but personally I never posted that it was for sure that Plextor had disabled RAW writing. I think Plextor gave a clear explanation on how they work, and why they do things. For now there is no reason Plextor drives will not support RAW writing in the future. Plextor sees RAW writing as something
natural of their drives, but not as a feature, if it works, great ! But if it doesn't, well Plextor never told you it would !
For CD Freaks visitors this will mean that there is no reason to NOT buy Plextor drives, cause, and many of you HAVE to agree on this, they really make good drives.
Only thing left is only an excuse from me to Plextor, CD Freaks has never wanted to give Plextor a bad name, the only intrest we have is the truth, nothing more and nothing less.
Also I don't think CD Freaks is guilty of anything, there was always an option to mail us, as my mails didn't get where they should have gone. But anyways, thanks Plextor for this
explanation !
Source: CD Freaks
