The power of DVD is at hand
Written: Sep 23 '00 (Updated Dec 31 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Inexpensive, excellent picture quality
Cons: Potential installation hassles, occasionally weak analog audio output
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| epitone's Full Review: Sigma Design REALmagic Hollywood Plus PCI Video Ca... |
OK, so DVD software and games have taken off like a ValuJet. But stick a Hollywood Plus into your computer and suddenly the extra cash you paid for a DVD drive in your PC doesn't seem like money down the drain anymore. It plays DVDs in superlative quality on your monitor or your television, through your computer speakers or your Dolby Digital stereo system. Essentially, it performs every function that a standalone DVD player does. And it costs less than $60. Sound good? It should.
Assuming you don't run into any PCI conflicts (I'll go into this later), the installation is as simple as a sound card or anything else. Pop the card into an available slot, install the software, and badda bing badda boom, you're up and running. The player software is intuitive and easy to use, very similar in layout to a conventional remote control. You can fine-tune brightness, contrast, and tint from the main control panel, and an advanced menu lets you adjust frame borders and image stability.
Picture quality is superb. Watching a good-looking DVD on a monitor is truly the next best thing to seeing it in a theater. The image is crisp and well-defined, and colors are reproduced with exceptional accuracy. For solo DVD watching, this is the way to go, especially if you have decent speakers or headphones.
If you have some friends over, and/or you prefer to watch movies on the couch, then the external video/audio outputs will come in handy. The Hollywood Plus will output to both S-video and composite video (call me a philistine if you will, but I honestly can't tell the difference), and either analog stereo/surround or Dolby Digital receivers. In this setup, the card definitely holds its own against more expensive standalone players. You may have to run some lengthy cables between your computer and TV, but at least doing so will buy you some cred with the hard-core techies.
One feature I just recently discovered (since originally writing this review) is the card's ability to convert PAL video to NTSC on the fly. This means you can pop in a DVD from overseas (like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs) and play it on your regular American television without having to buy an expensive converter box. As for the issue of region control, the card can be switched from region to region several times before it becomes region-locked. There are also some other ways around this; check your favorite unscrupulous hacker web site for details.
There are a few things worth mentioning in the "con" section. Like a lot of PCI devices, the Hollywood Plus has a knack for requesting a memory address already being used by something else. This will be immediately obvious upon installation, and the best way I found to remedy it was to do a little internal card shuffling. It may take a while, but you should be able to find a combination that works. I'm currently running the Hollywood Plus together with a Voodoo 3 AGP video card, a Diamond Monster Sound, a video capture card, and a PCI network adapter, and they've all been happily coexisting for some time now.
There's also the slightly sticky issue of compatibility. DVD movies have a thing called Macrovision burned into them, which is a form of copy protection so strong that it took almost two and a half years for a teenager to crack. Standalone players are very Macrovision-friendly because they were built to recognize it, but PC drives can run into some trouble with it. Before you start to get worried, let me say that I've only had this problem with one disc out of more than 50 that I've played with the Hollywood Plus. (The disc was The World Is Not Enough, and in fact it only stopped working after I installed a CD burner--c'est la vie.) It's highly, highly unlikely that you'll ever run into a problem like this, and if you do, Sigma Designs' web site has a well-maintained tech support section to help you out.
The only other quibble I have with the card is the analog audio output. On some discs it comes through very quietly, requiring me to crank up the volume on my receiver, resulting in occasional hissage. To alleviate this issue, I'd recommend using the best quality RCA cables you can find to connect the card to your receiver. The cheaper the cable, the greater the hiss potential.
On the whole, the Hollywood Plus is an outstanding component and a definite must-buy for anyone with a DVD drive in their computer (or anyone planning to buy a computer so equipped). For a measly $60, you can turn your computer into a home theater and eliminate the need for a standalone player in one felled swoop. There's even an optional remote control ($20) with a receiver that plugs into your serial port. This card is a great, inexpensive way to enter the burgeoning arena of DVD. With the money you save on a standalone player, you can start building your movie collection.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
epitone
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Member: Nick
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 1 member
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