Dxr2DVD Review
Creative Dxr2 DVD Review
By: Sam Schlansky Date: March 21st, 1998
Type: DVD Kit
Developed by: Creative Labs
Comments: DVD has come, and it's well worth it!
Overall:
92%
Performance:
98%
Value:
90%
Installation:
95%
Drivers:
84%
About The Kit
Before I played around with
this product, I was a non-believer.
VHS had always suited me just
fine to watch movies, and I didn't
really mind shuffling through six or
seven CD's in a game. Today, I
scour the 'net reading reviews of
the newest DVD's and wait with
baited breath for word of new
games coming out on the format.
Call me converted. And you should
be too.
Background on DVD
Digital Versatile Disk, or DVD, is
both the next generation in PC
mass storage and the next
generation in movies. DVD stores
up to seventeen gigabytes on a
disk the size of a CD using
smaller-sized pits and grooves in
its surface, which allows plenty of
space for four hours of
better-than-laserdisk quality video
or one seriously huge computer
game!
At the moment, DVD isn't for
the computer gamer, as the
number of games available on DVD
can be counted on the fingers of
one hand. That's changing,
though, as almost every game
company has committed to
releasing their titles on DVD. If you
take the leap now, you can find
over four hundred feature movies
available, with more being released
every day. I don't mean to provide
a complete primer on DVD (the
excellent DVD FAQ contains more
information than I could hope to
impart), so let's leave the
background information at that.
The Future of DVD, or
"DivX Sucks!"
There is no doubt in my mind
that DVD will be in every new
computer within a year. Many
major companies like Dell and
Gateway 2000 have already begun
including DVD drives and decoder
cards in their PC's, and the smaller
ones will follow their lead. DVD is
here to stay. And that, in my
humble opinion, is the key to DVD's
success in the video forum as well.
You see, DVD provides truly
superior quality to that of
Laserdisks, much less VHS tapes.
The quality of a DVD approaches
that of the studio master!
Combined with its Dolby Digital 5.1
sound (one front left, one front
right, one center, two rear
surround speakers, and a
subwoofer) and a clean
connection on a good TV, the
quality is simply astounding. And
that scares the heck out of the
suits that make the movies. The
thought of people making S-VHS
copies off of a clean DVD stops
them from sleeping at night, and
so the DVD Consortium has
included several kinds of
copy-protection in the basic
format. But is it good enough?
Circuit City doesn't think so,
and so they have introduced
"DivX", a scheme where you buy
the disk from your local 7-11
(because Blockbuster will be out of
business, you see) for $5, and
gain one 48-hour viewing period.
After that, you pay around $3 to
watch it again, which is verified
through a modem connection on
the back of the DivX player.
Consumer response to DivX has
been uniformly negative, and most
people don't think that it has a
chance.
I happen to agree. And not
because everybody hates it, but
because of DVD players on
computers like the Creative Dxr2.
If millions upon millions of
DVD-capable computers are out
there (probably with a higher
market penetration than
standalone DVD players, at least
at first) how can DivX succeed? If
you think I'm wrong, there are
several hundred militant
DivX-haters on USENET
alt.video.dvd that would be happy
to disagree. I hope I'm right!
Out of Box Experience
Enough background
information-- let's open up the
box. Inside of Creative Labs' flashy
red box, you find the drive itself,
(which looks identical to your old
CD-ROM drive, and in fact replaces
it) the Dxr2 decoder card, (which
fits in a free PCI slot) several
cables, a CD-ROM of drivers, and
two DVD games, Wing
Commander4 and Claw. Everything
appears to be high quality, and
the manual is very informative.
Installation
Installation wasn't much work
at all. I opened up my computer,
removed my old 24X CD-ROM
drive, popped the DVD-ROM in the
free space in the chassis, inserted
the Dxr2 in my last free PCI slot,
hooked up a couple of cables, and
closed up my box. Nothing too
mindbending.
The Dxr2 connects to your
monitor through a passthrough
identical to those 3DFX cables
that we've all seen. Unfortunately,
using two passthroughs does
introduce some image degradation
at high resolutions. I customarily
run at 1600x1200x75Hz resolution,
and noticed a great deal of image
degradation. It was much better
at 1280x1024x75Hz, and
unnoticeable at 1024x768x75Hz.
I found the degree of image
degradation unacceptable. Luckily,
I connected the S-Video cable
from the card to my television,
and watched my movies on the
TV. Finally, a reason to connect
my computer to my TV! I've never
understood the attraction of
playing games or word processing
on a television, but for movies,
there's no comparison. Much,
much better. The passthrough for
the Dxr2 is currently sitting in my
drawer, and good riddance.
If your television only has
composite (RCA) connectors on it,
don't fear-- you can use them
too, albeit with slightly worse
image quality. I would give you
screenshots to compare them, but
there's no way to take them due
to the "bluescreen" method of
displaying video.
The Hardware
The Encore is a second
generation DVD-ROM drive, which
basically means that it reads DVD's
at 2X speeds, and can read both
CD-R and CD-RW disks. It acts as
a 20X CD-ROM drive, and I didn't
notice any difference in speed
from my old Toshiba 24X CD-ROM
drive. The Dxr2 MPEG-2 decoder
card uses "DynamicXtended
Resolution" technology to enhance
the picture and eliminate MPEG-2
compression artifacts.
I can't tell you if
"DynamicXtended Resolution" is BS
or not... but I didn't notice any
artifacts when playing movies, so
either way it's A-OK. Audio comes
from one of two sources. If you
have a stereo receiver capable of
Dolby Digital 5.1 decoding, you
can plug in the S/PDIF digital out.
If you don't, the Dxr2 will still
output sound to your soundcard
through an included cable, playing
on your computer speakers. Note
that this means that it will not
play through your television's
speaker! The CD quality sound
would be ill-served being heard
through everyman's TV anyway.
I have noticed one other
problem, as well. When playing
DVD movies, my computer got
really hot! The Dxr2 card actually
got too hot to touch. Keep that in
mind... don't play two or three
hours of Quake2 with your SLI
Voodoo2's and think to watch the
Pamela and Tommy Lee DVD right
afterwards... your computer will
melt.
Drivers
The Encore's software works
great. After rebooting with the
card installed, Windows95
detected a PCI Multimedia device
and prompted me for the drivers. I
pointed it to the CD, it loaded up
the drivers, and rebooted. After
that, it was a simple matter of
installing the PC-DVD player (click
on setup.exe) and all was good.
The PC-DVD player looks like a
remote control, and is pretty
intuitive to use. You pop in a DVD
and press "play". The title screen
then comes up, which depending
on the disk offers different special
features, like cast bio's, movie
trailers, chapter selection, etc.
Get some popcorn, turn up your
stereo, click on "Start the Movie",
and relax.
The Creative Dxr2 is yet
another piece of hardware that is
not supported under WindowsNT.
The DVD-ROM drive works fine,
but the decoder card is not
supported at all. Sigh.
Movies
I've tested out the Dxr2 with
many DVD movies over the past
several weeks. I have purchased
Terminator 2, The Rock, The Lost
Boys, Total Recall, Groundhog
Day, The Fifth Element, and Austin
Powers. All of them worked
perfectly except for The Rock,
which gave me a parental warning
error, even though I had the
software's parental controls
disabled. I eventually got it to
work, although I'm not entirely
sure what I did. Don't you hate it
when that happens?
The movies all played
extremely clear, with little or no
artifacts, and the layer changes
were almost unnoticeable. For
example, the layer changes in
Terminator 2 when Sarah plunges
her knife in the wood table, and
even after watching it several
times, I found it difficult to notice.
Unfortunately, I don't have any
other DVD players here to compare
this to, but I have taken
Terminator 2 to a local high-end
stereo store and tested it out on
component hardware. The quality
of the Creative Dxr2 held up
remarkably well.
Games
The only games that I've seen
on the Dxr2 are the bundles,
Origin/EA's Wing Commander 4 and
Monolith's Claw. WC4 is not just a
shovelware title; all of the video
has been redone as high quality
MPEG-2. Obviously, it's not up to
the level of a real Hollywood
movie, but it is a lot better than I
remember WC4 being! It truly
enhances the gameplay. Claw, on
the other hand, played poorly and
didn't seem to benefit at all from
the DVD format. I've been looking
for other DVD games with no luck.
I've heard that Tex Murphy:
Overseer is available on DVD, but
nobody seems to have it in stock.
Value
This is a tough act to follow.
The general consensus on Usenet
is that the Encore Dxr2 is the best
DVD kit, and I see very little to
dispute that fact. However,
writing for a gaming publication, I
can find little to recommend it to
you right now.
On the other hand, if you have
any interest in watching movies,
the Encore Dxr2 is an excellent
value. Standalone players cost
from $500 to $900, and you can
find the PC-DVD Encore Dxr2 for
$250! If your computer is in the
same room as your TV, you can't
go wrong with the Dxr2. On the
other hand, if you're only
interested in playing games, you
might want to wait until there are
some games to play on it!
Recommended:
CPU: Intel 586
RAM: 16MB
Hard Drive:
10MB
Reviewer:
CPU: Intel
P2 375
RAM:
64MB
Hard
Drive: 14GB
Overall:
Next to a
Voodoo2,
this will
impress
your friends
the most of
all.
Value:
Cheap
compared
to a
standalone
player,
expensive
compared
to a
CD-ROM.
Tech
Specs: 2nd
generation
EIDE
DVD-ROM,
PCI MPEG-2
Card
Pros:
Once
you've
watched a
movie or
played a
game on
DVD, you'll
never want
to go back.
Cons:
You'll have
to go back
to VHS and
CD-ROM,
since DVD
movies and
games are
still hard to
find.
Your
Reviews
and
Comments.
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