Plextor has traditionally been the drive manufacturer prefered by most professionals and not without reason. Plextor has always produced drives of quality, although their last efforts have fallen well short of the mark. So it was with great interest that we put the BD-R PX-B900A through its paces.

It is by no means a fast drive with the more traditional CD and DVD media in either writing or reading. But then, this seems to be the case with all the new Blu-ray drives being released. The BD-R PX-B900A is based on the Panasonic MN103S98HBA which is an all in one CD, DVD and Blu-ray controller chip.While writing speeds aren't the fastest on the market ( 8X for DVD±R and 4X for DVD±R DL), they are nonetheless quite adequate for the needs of most users. The drive however is a Blu-ray drive and in that department, it supports 2X reading and writing speeds for BD-R and BD-RE (SL and DL) media.

In our suite of tests, the drive in the main produced very good results. It proved a very capable reader with both CD and DVD defective media. In fact, it is one of the best drives in error correction that we have seen in a long time. With burning CD and DVD media, it provided very good quality, probably in part due to the fact that burning was done at lower speeds. What was noticable was how steady the drive was. Even the writing and reading times are almost exactly the same for any particaular speed, regardless of the media brand. For example, if we look at burning times with DVD-R media, at 8X speed it took 8:06, 8:06 and 8:07 mins with three different brands. The reading times for the same format range from 9:38 to 9:43 mins for 7 different brands. That's consistency. And the CD-DVD Speed graphs are all excellent. The DaTARIUS Scans did pick up some errors, but in the main, quality was very good.

Blu-ray media was also excellent in both writing and reading. We had absolutely no problems there at all. The drive is also among the few currently available capable of writing on dual-layer BD-R media. Unfortunately, we were unable to test any titles with the drive, since as yet, no releases have been frothcoming in the European region. But the drive is only one link in the chain of devices required to play a HD title. In order to play HD content titles, a compatible HDCP monitor or HDMI TV set is required as well as an appropriate graphics card (HDCP) and the latest Nvidia or ATI drivers. But there have been problems getting everything to work together at this early stage. Not all the available graphics cards are HDCP-ready, no matter what the VGA manufacturers claim. It is hoped, that as the whole process matures, compatibility issues will be ironed out.

What is also intersting is the fact that currently, you may experience full HD playback of movies through the RGB interface (analogue) of your graphic card. But these tests will follow in our next reviews.

All in all, this appears to be a return to the quality drives we have come to expect form Plextor.