Great Drive, but... (5x DXR2)
Written: Jun 10 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Great drive, decoder is okay
Cons: Decoder not great on monitor, Software not very good
|
|
|
| Bananaswift's Full Review: Creative Labs PC-DVD ROM kit |
This is a pretty good drive. My brother and I bought this a few years ago when the stand alone DVD players were still over $400. It is a 5x DVD drive that includes Creative's DXR2 MPEG decoder card. I really like this DVD drive. It is a pretty fast DVD drive that still reads CDs really fast also. (Some DVD drives read DVDs at 5x and only read CDs at under 20x.) This drive is also pretty good at ripping audio CDs with a program like WinDAC.
The DXR2 decoder card is also really nice. When playing DVD movies, there is very little impact on the performance of your system unlike with software decoders which need the full attention of your system. The decoder card includes an output to connect it to your TV with either S-Video or an RCA video cable that both provide nice quality. Unfortunately, your computer must be within about five feet of the TV unless you have an abundance of extension cords for these types of cables. It also has an S/PDIF output to connect the sound to a Dolby Digital receiver. If you can't take advantage of that, it is really an undertaking to connect the sound from your sound card to the television (assuming you have the proper cables to do so). My only complaint with this card is that it must be externally connected to your video card and your monitor must be connected to the decoder card. This is for the purpose of overlaying the image on your monitor I guess for the sole purpose to prevent screen shots from being taken of DVDs. I have a TV tuner card that uses overlay to display its image but doesn't require an external monitor connection to do so. This is just a bad way of doing this.
This setup is great for outputting DVDs to your TV; however, this is probably one of the worst for watching them on your computer. The decoder optimizes the output for televisions and therefore the quality on a monitor is less than desirable, especially using the overlay method for displaying it. If you are going to be viewing movies primarily on your computer, I recommend a software decoder such as Cinemaster. The one advantage of a setup like this is that can be run on a slower computer. Software decoders need a fast system with lots of memory to work perfectly.
I highly recommend Creative DVD drives, but I do not think the decoder card is worth the extra $100 or so it adds to the price. I would suggest getting one of the newer 8x or 10x Creative drives that does not include the decoder and getting a software decoder such as Cinemaster or PowerDVD.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Bananaswift
|
|
Location: Broken Arrow, OK
Reviews written: 19
Trusted by: 5 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.