Creatives DVD Drive -Great Value & Performance
Written: Dec 27 '00 (Updated Dec 27 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great Player
Cons: Buggy Software
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| Destinys-Child's Full Review: Creative Labs PC-DVD ROM kit |
This was my Christmas present to myself this year. Ok well I admit it Christmas or not I was going to buy it, but Christmas was a good excuse.
At $169.99 it was a bit much to ask anyone to buy it for me (even though my girlfriends necklace cost more), so I took it upon myself to buy it.
Specs/Accessories - Just in case your into this sort of thing
One Internal 12x DVD / 40X CD Rom Drive (All in one)
One Internal PCI Card
Creative Software / Drivers
Cords/Cables Etc.
Detailed installation guide
Installation
I am not going to get all technical with the installation since this is not a “How to install a DVD Rom lecture”. The booklet that comes with the kit gives detailed explanations on how everything fits together. The only reason I will give you instructions on how to do it is so you can decide for yourself whether or not you would be able to do it.
Installation is pretty basic for me, but should be easy for anyone who has installed a CD Rom or hard drive in the past.
You need to put the drive into an empty bay and either daisy chain it off of an existing CD Rom (CD Writer) drive or just replace an existing one. I have my DVD as Primary Master, and my CD writer as Secondary Master. My two hard-drives are on my motherboards new enhanced ports, but I’m not going to go into that.
Find a vacant PCI slot and install the DVD card.
Now comes the fun part - this is a must - you have to connect the DVD drive to the DVD card via the cables provided. Then you must connect the DVD card to the sound card with the cables provided. If you skip this part you will not have sound when you play the movies. The installation packet gives detailed instructions on how to do this.
Last step is to use the provided cable to link your graphic cards monitor plug into your DVDs plug. Then instead of plugging your monitor into your graphics card you need to plug it into your DVD card.
You have additional cables, which allow you to plug in a TV right to the card and thus watch the DVDs on a TV rather that your monitor. Great for people who’s PC is close to their TV, and don’t want to buy a separate DVD player.
Software
Once you finish and reboot it will ask you for the drivers. Simply insert the CD Rom and point it to
English > Drivers > Win 9x (or whatever your OS is) >
It will install everything necessary and then once you get back into windows just install the creative software itself so you can watch the movies.
The most annoying part is the registration part, which requires tons of personal information to be broadcast over the net. For anyone who knows me they know I hate doing this. It is just a way for companies to send you more junk mail with the premise that if you don’t register you will not receive “special” deals. I have yet to get any special deals from any place I registered with. Anyway do it if you wish, but otherwise fill in a lot of junk information and hit send.
The software itself is a bit buggy, it tends to crash if you try to skip scenes or pause it and play it again. In fact mine crashes every time I shut it down. It could be due to the fact that I am using Windows ME and it is not setup for that, but installation went with no problem.
I did do to download.com and they had quite a few DVD players you can download so there is not a shortage of those.
Overall
The movies look and sound great on my PC. They run without skipping and without any color bleeding (the haze that sometimes surrounds low quality movies). Of course depending on your system speed you may not see the same performance that I do.
Even at full screen the movie looks terrific, and on my PCs surround sound system they sound better than they do on my TV.
When you start the movie it is in this tiny little window that you can adjust all the way up to full screen. No matter what I put it at it still looked perfect.
The DVD/CD Rom itself is quick and has not stuttered once while I was using it. I would recommend that you have at least 96 megs of Ram and a 300+ mhz PC. Anything less and you may have a hard time watching movies.
If you are looking for a great DVD player for the PC than I definitely recommend this.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Destinys-Child
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 - Top 500 |
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Location: Sagamore Beach Ma.
Reviews written: 128
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About Me:
A fool and his money were lucky to be together in the first place.
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