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| DVD or Not? |
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| Trot into nearly any video store and you'll see that DVD is no longer an expensive toys. DVD are now standard in movie watching. They have more of a variety and becoming to be cheaper. Now that there's a reason to outfit your PC for DVD check out two of the latest upgrade kits, the Diamond Multimedia Maximum and the Hi-Val PC to TV Home Entertainment System. Although there are more out their including Creative These are the Top two. Here's why, 1. The Hi-Val kit is a clever solution if you want DVD on both your television and your PC. They don't even have to be in the same room, thanks to a 2.4 GHZ transmitter into the MPEG-2 card and connect the receiver to any television just as you would a VCR. Hi-Val claims the signal can go through up to five walls; in our tests it could only go through only three. But if your television is in the next room from your PC, you'll get a pristine signal. The downside to watching PC-based DVD from your television is that you have no remote control. If you need DVD for only your television or your PC, you'll want a different package. 2. The only problem is that it doesn't have the best PC picture quality we've ever seen either. Action scenes were smooth enough, but there were jaggies and fuzzy lines in nearly every movie we viewed. Also, be aware that the MPEG 2 card requres a heavy-duty Direct X video card. What you need is probably a 16MB or even 32MB with a accelerated chip on it. 3. The Diamond Maxium DVD kit doesn't cost as much as the Hi-Val, but it's not equipped to play wirelessly on your television either. Though the Maximum DVD kit is pretty basic, with a DVD drive and an MPEG-2 card, setup was a chore. We had to call technical support a couple of times to get the video image centered on the screen. Also, because the kit makes you loop your video card through the MPEG-2 card, you may see some slight degradation of your Windows 98 graphics. On one machine colors were slightly washed out after we installed the DVD kit. 4. As far as video quality goes the Diamond Maximum DVD has the best we've seen in an upgrade kit so far, but it's not perfect. At full screen the video was a little muddy. DVD for your PC is here, but we're still waiting for a mind-blowing upgrade kit. Most television DVD players are out of this world, and so are the many pre-installed PC systems. You may have problems with either of these two kits, depending on your PC. If it works, it works well; just be sure to hang onto your receipt. For more information go to: www.dvd.com www.about.com Exerted from: Home Office Computing (CurtCo FREEDOM Group) www.hoc.smalloffice.com from all editions, 1999-2000 PC Computing November 1997 Copyright Fortune December 7th, 8th 1998 Copyright CommuniQue March 1998 edition Issue 89 Copyright. Chris Yurko from Home Office magazine |
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