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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DiViT who wrote (28181)	1/16/1998 1:53:00 PM
From: Ian deSouza	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Can you send a letter to the nbc folks. They should revise it if its incorrect. Also, I have to post the part on hard vs. soft DVD. Hopefully this will put to rest the soft DVD argument. nbcnews.com SOFTWARE VS. HARDWARE DVD In PC Magazine's Dec. 16 First Look of a Compaq Presario 4850 with a DVD-ROM drive, we noted the Presario 4850 relies on software to decode MPEG-2 video and AC3 audio signals. This system provides a good point of comparison between software and hardware DVD, as it, like the Dimension, is a 300-MHz Pentium II PC. The Presario was able to play back all of the DVD titles that we threw at it. However, we did witness jumpy and jerky motions due to dropped frames in slow motion and in wide pan shots. While we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of playback, it didn't quite match the quality of the hardware-aided DVD playback of the Dimension machine. This is because the maximum frame rate that the Presario can achieve is 25fps (through software decode and motion compensation conducted by the system's graphics accelerator), while the Dimension's CineMaster board can handle 30fps completely in hardware. Another drawback to software DVD is that it uses all of the CPU's bandwidth. Conversely, the Dimension's CineMaster board only uses an average of 20 percent of CPU bandwidth during MPEG-2 video decode. Granted, if you're watching a movie, it's highly unlikely that you're going to be doing anything else. However, if you're using a DVD software title, you'll likely have trouble running anything else at the same time on a fully software-DVD-decoded system. Until now, the argument for software DVD has been cost: Hardware DVD typically adds a few hundred dollars to the price of a PC. But while the Presario 4850 and the Dimension XPS D300-DVD both cost close to $3,000, the Presario's price doesn't include a monitor (a 17-inch Compaq monitor will cost you an additional $700). If you're like me, waiting for a DVD machine, this is THE machine to get ( for now anyway )!