Creative Labs PC- DVD Encore 5X: Third Time's the Charm
Sheldon Leemon
[DXR2 is C-Cube ZiVA based}
05/01/99 Computer Shopper from ZDWire
Copyright (c) 1999 ZD Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Although DVD may be slow in gaining popularity as a computer storage format, there's nothing slow about the pace at which Creative Labs has been pushing the technology. In fact, the company recently introduced its third DVD -ROM upgrade kit in less than two years. The new Creative Labs PC- DVD Encore 5X has the highest level of performance, the best compatibility, and--at $249 estimated--the lowest price yet.
Installing the drive is easy: Simply replace your existing IDE CD-ROM drive plug for plug or slip the Encore 5X in alongside the old drive. The kit's Drx2 decoder card, which unscrambles MPEG-2 video and Digital Dolby sound, plugs into a PCI expansion slot. Creative Labs recommends this card use a nonshared IRQ, which can be a commodity on Pentium II systems. To come up with the needed resources, we moved it to the first PCI slot of our testbed and disabled an unused serial port. Once the hardware is set up, simply load the drivers and movie-player software from the included CD.
The driver software includes a neat Taskbar application called Creative Disc Detector that identifies the disc in the drive and starts the appropriate program. For example, if you insert a DVD movie, it runs the Creative PC- DVD Player program. The player interface looks like a TV remote and includes configuration settings; controls for special DVD movie options such as chapter menus, camera angles, soundtrack and subtitle language, and parental lockout; and movement controls such as skip, fast scan, and slow motion. If it feels cluttered, you can minimize the remote, and use keyboard shortcuts or right-mouse menus to access the controls.
DVD movie playback was smooth with excellent picture quality that scaled cleanly from a small window to full screen at a 1,024x768 resolution. The picture quality was even better on an external TV, using the included composite or S-VHS video-output jacks. The 5x DVD -ROM drive also has a 32x speed rating with CD-ROMs, and can read CD-R and CD-RW discs--as well as new DVD -RAM media that can be removed from their caddies.
Sadly, the only DVD software included with the kit is an upgraded version of Wing Commander IV--testimony to the continuing dearth of new DVD software. But thousands of DVD movie titles are now available in many rental outlets. And even if it takes a while for computer software publishers to jump on the DVD bandwagon, the Encore 5X still makes for an affordable and sensible upgrade from an aging CD-ROM drive. Creative's new PC- DVD Encore 5X upgrade kit offers impressive performance for less than $250.
Company: Creative Labs
Milpitas, CA; 800-998-5227, 408-428-6600
www.creativelabs.com
Product: Creative Labs PC- DVD Encore 5X
Support: Live phone support, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mon. to Sat., noon to 8 p.m. Sun. (CT); BBS; e-mail; web; CompuServe; one-year warranty
Suitability: A smart choice for users looking to upgrade an aging CD-ROM drive
Requires: 100MHz Pentium or faster; 16MB RAM (32MB recommended); 6MB hard drive space; PCI slot; EIDE connector on motherboard; half-height drive bay; Sound Blaster 16-compatible sound board; Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT
Mfr. Est. Price: $249 |
