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

To: BillyG who wrote (33632)	6/5/1998 12:00:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

The Future Never Looked Better For A Crisp Encore Peter Moon. Peter Moon Is A Partner 06/05/98 Australian Financial Review Page 45 Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd For two years, DVD (digital video disk) technology has been the Next Big Thing in home entertainment. DVD is the successor both to CD-ROMs and videotape - a five-inch data disk with the capacity to hold a feature film. With stand-alone players on the market at $1,200 plus, the $599 PC-based Encore package from Creative Labs is a bargain upgrade for computer owners. Any computer store should be able to install the drive in 20 minutes, but Hands On decided on a do-it-yourself approach. It was painless. The drive simply swapped with our existing CD-ROM. We plugged the decoder card into a PCI slot, connected a couple of cables and fired up the PC. Windows 95 recognised the new hardware first time, and we entered the DVD age in under half an hour. First we made sure we had taken no backward steps. As a conventional CD-ROM data reader, Encore delivers respectable 20 speed performance. Audio CDs play as before. A program CD "burned" using a CD recorder worked too. Some earlier models of DVD could not read recordable disks, but this unit is solidly backward-compatible with existing technology. If the past is well accommodated, the future never looked better. Slipping our first movie into the tray, we found the picture crisp and detailed, and the motion fluent. Most striking is the depth provided. In the opening moments of Shine, Geoffrey Rush peers into a bar room on a rainy night. The definition of the wet glass is high enough that you almost wipe your PC screen dry. The image scales in size smoothly, with no detectable degradation even at full screen in high resolution. Encore is not just for your computer monitor. While a super VGA screen offers far better viewing quality than a conventional television, even a 17-inch (42-centimetre) PC monitor is no substitute for a 70 cm TV screen. Using an s-video cable - the kind that connects a video camera to a TV for playback - the DVD player turns your PC into a serious home entertainment unit, producing a sharp image and hi-fi sound. Audiophiles will find the new disks a treat, offering sound tracks with two to five channels, including the new Dolby AC-3 standard. Oddly, the s-video cable supplied by Creative is only 1.5 metres long. Few home PCs are that close to the television. Hands On detected a major failure of capitalism in our search for longer leads. Video and PC stores reported a growing demand for 3-metre-plus DVD extension cables, but none could supply them. We eventually found the extremely obliging DVD Shop in Melbourne (online at dvdshop.com.au), which expects to have long cables in a month or so, letting you connect your television to a DVD -enabled PC across the room or the hallway. Instead of a physical remote control, Encore uses an on-screen version. It offers all the usual play, fast motion and slo-mo features, plus more. Freeze frame and slow motion are virtually flicker-free. Continuity buffs will enjoy the ability to select a section of a film and replay it in a continuous loop. DVD movies will offer a choice of languages for soundtrack and subtitles, selectable via the remote control. The control also offers access to "chapters" so you can easily return to a favourite scene or pick up a story you were watching earlier. In Australia, initial DVD disk offerings are few, and biased towards shoot-'em-up "action" movies. Better-quality content is available through online stores like DVD Express at dvdexpress.com. But beware: most DVDs are regionally coded. A disk coded for North America -"zone 1" in industry terms - will not play on a drive shipped for the Australian market (we are "zone 4"). Encore allows you to change zones five times, with your fifth choice being final.