Creative's Encore reviewed...............................
techweb.com
October 27, 1997, Issue: 188
Section: News
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Creative Labs Aims to Jump-start DVD-ROM Category With Upgrade Product -- Encore kit provides rich performance
By Kristen Kenedy
Milpitas, Calif.-Television compatibility, faster drive speeds and the low price of Creative Labs' latest Encore DVD-ROM upgrade kit give customers a new reason to check out the format.
Although Creative Labs officials acknowledged that DVD-ROM upgrades haven't exactly flown off the shelves this year, the new Encore version offers some intriguing options.
Chief among those features is the drive's ability to double as a DVD player for a standard television. Encore connects to a TV via the video-out or high-quality S-video port and can be displayed in NTSC (the U.S. format) or PAL (the European format). The kit sells for a suggested retail price of $379.
CRW Labs tested the kit to find out how well it would operate in a living-room setting. We tested the drive on a 133MHz Pentium-based PC with 16MB of RAM, a Creative Labs AWE 32-bit sound card and STB's Velocity 128 2-D/3-D video card with 4MB of video memory.
Encore comes with a DVD-ROM playback board that incorporates an MPEG-2 decoder; video-out and AC-3-out connections; a DVD-ROM drive; DVD playback software and bundled DVD-ROM titles; and a 6-foot video cable.
The most obvious restriction imposed on the drive is its attachment to the PC. The S-video cable wasn't long enough for our set-up, so we obtained an S-video extension connector (available free from Creative Labs' technical support department) and purchased an additional 12-foot S-video cable for about $25.
Watching the film Twister on a 27-inch TV screen, we clearly saw a sharp, enhanced picture. The movie played without a glitch until about halfway through, when we lost a couple of frames, presumably as the PC struggled to decode the MPEG-2 video and deliver it to the screen. There was slight feedback on the TV screen from our connection to the PC. But this was hardly noticeable when the DVD movie started.
Playback on a 15-inch monitor looked crisp and clear, too, but a small blue stripe on the left side persisted throughout the movie.
The sound was rich, despite the fact that we dragged a pair of IBM PC speakers near the TV set because we lacked an AC-3 receiver unit and stereo speakers.
The software provides a remote control-like interface for easy navigation. With the DVD-ROM drive connected to the PC on the other side of the room, we were unable to pause, rewind, fast forward or stop the movie easily-a definite drawback.
Encore also contains all the standard features of a DVD-ROM player. According to Creative Labs, it supports CD-ROM and CD-R (recordable) media in CD-ROM drives up to 24x. The DVD-ROM and DVD movie playback is equivalent to the speeds of an 18x CD-ROM drive, officials at Creative said.
Creative provides instructions to help customers install the drive, but don't leave this kit with a novice.
And make sure you and your customer know the minimum requirements:100Mhz PC (133MHz recommended), a Sound Blaster-compatible sound card (the board won't work with a sound chip on the motherboard), an SVGA graphics adapter with 1MB of video RAM, at least one free PCI slot, PC audio speakers and Windows 95.
Copyright (c) 1997 CMP Media Inc. |
