I have 2 BenQ burners, the 162I bought in December 2005 and the secon EW-164B bought in April of this year. All are uptodate with firmware and drivers and I have done over 100+ backups and no coasters using the BenQ Book Management exe. program and burning in DVD ROM, great results for our huge family's diverse age and brand of standalone burners. Now with the prospect of Blu Ray on the horizon I want to get another BenQ ext burner or even the 1640 and put it in a case as I love the units. I use the recommended BenQ R+ media, sony, tdk, maxell, Benq and not one coaster out of 100+ backups. I use the unit to backup my panasonic pv-gs 300 mini dv camcorder family getogethers etc. and the odd other backup. Now I am panic stricken as I read articles that BenQ is no longer going to be in this market and will sell as OEM in whatever model and of course that worries me about firmware updates and the Book Management program exe. that I always use with great success. In western Canada there is still the DW internal 1650 available, however the seller was good enought to tell me that he loves BenQ as well and that I should not buy this one and put it in a case as it does not operate properly and the firmware is not uptodate. Thus I am here in a quandry as to what to do. The Big Box stores are only selling..Future Shop LG 16x Lightscribe gsa- EIOL and I think I need special discs for that Lightscribe. I had a LG last year as well as a Sony DRU and gave them both to a charity store to sell as their reliability on playing on our family's standalone units was a disaster and I use the family occasions on a DVD as a Christmas present etc. Everybody loves that. Now what to do is the dilemma that I am in. Not being a technology in the know user I need advice. I talked to the Tech Support for BenQ in Irvine Ca and they were of little help and were non commital about what is available and promised callbacks which I never got. I really hope someone can reply here, thankyou
There are still several vendors selling the Plextor PX 740UF which is a rebadged BenQ EW164.... I bought one recently...
Thx very much for the reply, I was just wondering if the book management exe. that I use to burn all of my media in DVD ROM wil work with the Plextor. When I have used it with the BenQ burners I have my backups work on 22 different standalone player models that we have in our family with no problem at all. I hope that someone has comments, thankyou.
Yes, it will work. Once crossflashed, your drive will be a BenQ EW 164B (which it is from the start; just has Plextor branding and firmware)...
Now my issue is finding the Plextor, it seems locally here it is not a common model either as I placed 6 calls to sellers out of our computer newspaper and received no responses from any of them as to whether they will be able to order in a Plextor, is the model that old? One supplier said that he could get the Plextor PX 750UF but would have to check around for the PX 740 UF and no calls yet. Perhaps their reps haven't called them back, I will wait and see. Thankyou
