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Best Buy
Surprisingly, our application benchmarks and hands-on evaluations showed that DVD-1 and DVD-2 kits provide very similar performance. All these kits provide awe-inspiring video and audio playback, and can read vast stores of data from DVD-ROMs able to pack 4.7GB on one side. Still, compatibility with CD-Recordable and CD-Rewritable media make DVD-2 kits the superior buy, and the Creative Labs PC-DVD Encore kit is the best of the bunch. The Encore edged out all other kits in our performance tests, and it's the only DVD-2 drive that provides both a trouble-free analog video connection and Dolby AC-3 audio hardware.
[Sony uses Sigma Designs Hollywood decoder card. IBM for the Video decoder and software for the AC3 audio decoding. The author complains about the audio software using 42% of the CPU. That's just for audio!- dave]
The Sony DDU100E/H preproduction unit we tested takes a different tack, using DVD-ROM player software to decode the AC-3 audio stream, rather than relying on hardware on the decoder board. Unfortunately, the software processing takes a major toll on your CPU. During playback of DVD movies on our Pentium MMX-200 system, we recorded an average CPU load of 42 percent when using the Sony kit, compared with averages ranging from 9 percent to 24 percent for all other kits. The lesson here: Without AC-3 audio hardware, games that employ MPEG-2 video and AC-3 audio may bog down your system, preventing it from producing fast frame rates and smooth action. Sony says the production version of its kit will include AC-3 audio hardware. |
