Sigma.....
ProGen's Discover MPEGII Delivers the Multimedia Goods
O'Brien, Bill
06/01/98
Computer Shopper
Page 225
(COPYRIGHT 1998 Ziff Davis Publishing Company) Copyright 1998 Information Access Company. All rights reserved.
If you thought you couldn't get onto the leading edge of computing for $2,100, think again. ProGen Technology has cleared the way with its $2,099-direct Discover MPEGII system. This PC is packed with everything a multimedia maven could ask for, and its 333MHz Pentium II processor, 64MB of SDRAM, and 8.4GB hard drive offer no compromises on computing power.
As its name implies, the Discover MPEGII features DVD capability, supplied by a Hitachi GD-2000 DVD -ROM drive and a Sigma Designs RealMagic Hollywood MPEG-2 decoder card. While that's certainly a competent combination, our initial attempts to view a DVD movie were met by a solid-green screen. ProGen's technical support diagnosed the problem in short order as a missing bridge cable that should have connected the system's graphics card and MPEG decoder, which was apparently missing. We found the cable tucked away in one of the system's accessory boxes, made the connection, and after some minor (and mostly automatic) adjustments to the RealMagic software to calibrate color and image position, we were back on track. The picture quality was very good, although it did take some fiddling with the contrast and gamma controls to achieve the best results.
A hardware MPEG-2 solution, such as that found in the Discover, uses less CPU bandwidth than software decoding and typically allows multitasking while viewing a DVD movie. However, there's a practical downside: Most hardware decoder solutions work with a limited number of graphics accelerator cards. Thus, if you ever want to upgrade your graphics board, you'll have to find one that will work with the MPEG decoder in order to retain the DVD functionality.
If you tire of watching commercially available movies, you can try making your own with the included Panasonic EggCam desktop camera and miro video capture board. As with everything else in the ProGen package, the drivers for these products are already preinstalled and ready to go.
Our Business Graphics WinMark 98 made it clear that 2-D graphics are no challenge for ProGen's Genesis GX2 AGP graphics card. Its S3 VirgeGX/2 accelerator cut a rapid path through our tests, scoring well above our benchmark system. Its MPEG-1 video-playback performance was equally impressive. On the other hand, we wouldn't list 3-D graphics as one of the Discover's strong points--it rated 141 on our 3D WinBench test, against a benchmark score of 411. The Discover's Maxtor hard drive scored 18 percent below average for this class, too. Throughout it all, the system's Panasync S70 17-inch monitor provided superb image quality. The display features a 16-inch viewing area, a 0.27mm dot pitch, and front-mounted controls.
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