Amazon.com Review
If you want excellent DVD viewing on your computer, then you should certainly check out the PC-DVD Encore 6x Dxr3 internal DVD-ROM drive kit from Creative Labs. Of course, you can use this ultrafast drive to read DVD-ROMs and CD-ROMs, but you can also use it watch the latest DVD titles in Dolby Digital sound.
The kit ships with a Creative 6x DVD-ROM drive, Dxr3 decoder board, IDE data cable, CD audio cable, dual connector audio cable, VGA loop-back cable, S-Video-to-composite converter cable, and a load of cool software. Installation was surprisingly simple given the complexity of so many cables, but after a few sound-card difficulties, we installed the PC-DVD quickly and easily.
The manual is extensive, walking you through the installation process step by step. The manual answered most of our questions, and we appreciated the troubleshooting section, which offered helpful solutions to common problems. The instructions also outline the function of each software button thoroughly, eliminating much of the guesswork associated with learning a new interface.
We set the jumpers on the DVD-ROM drive to master and set our existing CD-ROM drive to slave, and then connected the drive to the secondary IDE connector with the provided IDE ribbon. We connected the DVD drive to one of the audio connectors on our sound card and connected the provided dual audio connector from the line-out connector on the Dxr3 card to the other audio connector on the sound card. If you have only one CD audio connector on your sound card, then you'll need to connect both your CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives to the Dxr3 card and connect the audio card to the Dxr3 card with the dual audio connector. The monitor was then connected to the Dxr3 card, and we used the loop-back cable to connect to our VGA card. Hardware installation was completed by connecting our speakers to the audio card.
Once we ironed out some wrinkles in an initially faulty installation, we installed the drivers from the provided floppy disk. The drivers installed right away and the rest of setup proceeded flawlessly. After rebooting our computer, we performed a typical install of the provided PC-DVD Player Application software. The software was very intuitive and easy to use, and in no time, we were watching high-fidelity, crystal-clear DVD movies.
The software consists of a menu that allows you to chose scenes at the start of a movie. (You can also access the menu in the middle of a movie.) The software's "remote control" lets you move forward in slow motion, fast-forward, click to the next scene, stop, reverse, or pause during the course of the movie. You can manually scale the screen to any size or watch in the preferred full-screen mode. The screen supports resolutions up to 1,600 x 1,200 at 32-bit color, allowing for gorgeous graphics (depending, of course, on your monitor size).
You'll want a top-of-the-line multimedia sound system if you plan on watching DVDs on you computer. It would be a travesty to continue to use a tinny pair of satellite speakers. We used a high-end three-piece system with a healthy subwoofer, delivering good bass and full sound, but you should consider a five-piece system with surround sound for cinema-like quality. (Creative Labs recommends several.)
Of course, the DVD-ROM drive is also backward compatible with other media such as DVD-R, CD-audio, CD-I, CD Extra, CD-ROM, CD-ROM/XA, Photo CD, CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD-Video. The drive plays back DVD media at 6x speeds and CD-ROM data at speeds of 24x. Average access time is 120 milliseconds for CD and 180 milliseconds for DVD.
At this price, with its superior performance, easy installation, extensive features, and exciting software bundle, the PC-DVD Encore 6x Dxr3 is too good to pass up.
Pros:
- Easy to install
- Terrific video quality
- Intuitive interface
- Ships with nice assortment of software
Amazon.com Product Description
PC-DVD(tm) Encore 6X with Dxr(tm)3 Technology. Creative(r) PC-DVD(tm) Encore 6X with Dxr(tm)3 brings the future of digital home entertainment to your PC and your home. Witness vibrant digital imagery of DVD video, immerse yourself in cinema-like Dolby(r) Digital (AC-3(r)) surround audio, and harness the massive data storage that's only found in PC-DVD technology. The next-generation Creative Dxr3 decoder board delivers impeccable image quality and provides better processing of color video at high resolutions. In addition to stunning video, the Dxr3 board takes Dolby Digital (AC-3) audio and feeds it to a receiver or DeskTop Theater(tm) 5.1 for theater-like, room-shaking audio with a 6-speaker surround system *. Or you can connect Dxr3 to your Sound Blaster(r) audio card for great stereo sound. The versatile Creative PC-DVD 6X drive reads DVDs at up to 6x speeds, giving you near-instant access to your data. Support for popular disk types such as DVD-R, CD-R, CD-RW, and CD audio provide seamless access to your existing data and audio library. * Dolby Digital (AC-3) 5.1 channel audio requires Cambridge SoundWorks(r) DeskTop Theater 5.1 speaker system or an amplifier/receiver with Dolby Digital coaxial input, and Dolby Digital (AC-3) supported applications.
Product Description
Creative PC-DVD Encore 6X with Dxr3 brings the future of digital home entertainment to your PC and your home. Witness vibrant digital imagery of DVD video, immerse yourself in cinema-like Dolby Digital (AC-3) surround audio, and harness the massive data storage that's only found in PC-DVD technology. The next-generation Creative Dxr3 decoder board delivers impeccable image quality and provides better processing of color video at high resolutions. In addition to stunning video, the Dxr3 board takes Dolby Digital (AC-3) audio and feeds it to a receiver or Desktop Theater 5.1 for theater-like, room-shaking audio with a 6-speaker surround system. Or you can connect Dxr3 to your Sound Blaster audio card for great stereo sound. The versatile Creative PC-DVD 6X drive reads DVDs at up to 6x speeds, giving you near-instant access to your data. Support for popular disk types such as DVD-R, CD-R, CD-RW, and CD audio provide seamless access to your existing data and audio library. For a theater-style movie experience on your PC or TV, supreme DVD video and audio, plus access to massive data, PC-DVD Encore 6X with Dxr3 is the ticket.
Customer Reviews:
Product is great, support is not so great.......2002-06-04
This is not one of those stories of the bad experience with the a defective product, and it took months for a replacement. It's the answers and solutions I get from tech support for this that are really bad.
The product itself was great while it lasted. When I first bought it I had a PC with Win98SE installed. It ran fine, picture quality of DVD movies was just a little scratchy (but negligible) from my monitor, but crystal clear on my flat screen TV. This product also played other formats like MPEG & DAT, which was nice to see on my TV. I was having a great experience and thought highly of this product, UNTIL...I bought my new PC with WinXP installed,... guess what? THERE ARE NO DRIVERS AVAILABLE FOR 2000 or XP!!! Sure they got Beta drivers out... but they are pretty flaky and cause your computer to lock up or not respond. These beta drivers could also cause MCI plugin errors, which basically means you can't use the product at all, except as a regular slow-speed CD-ROM. What annoys me is when you are about to download the beta drivers for the product, there is a disclaimer that says they will not provide any tech support or be liable for any damage the driver causes--download at your own risk, basically. What annoyed me more is, if you ask any technician at Creative Labs when the driver will be released, the answer is, "We do not know." ... "We don't know." ... "We aren't sure yet."
When was Win 2000 released? And they still don't have a driver for their extravagant, overly-advertised DYNAMIC EXTENDED RESOLUTION (dxr3) decoder board? It's a wonder how they sell their products. I mean they show off their "new and improved" PC-DVD products every year or so, but they only work with Win 95/98/ME?? It's not like 2000 or XP was suddenly released without warning. Let the world run on Win98 for the rest of their lives to watch DVD's since Creative never knows when their drivers will be released.
If I had recieved a better answer rather than, "I don't know," maybe I wouldn't be so harsh on the tech support.
Windows 2000 + DVD Encore 6x/8x = waste of time.......2000-05-16
VERY poor after sales service, EXTREMELY slow Drive, Possibly the most cumbersome, poorly designed user interface for the player I have ever seen, and no windows 2000 drivers (waiting 4 months), leaves me wondering how creative managed to get where it did. On a positive note, when I got this for the first time, I was impressed by the picture and sound quality (accept for the drive which manages to interfere with the sound card (awe64) ). And the cambridge speakers I got with it are the most brilliant speakers I have ever heard. I completely recommend the speakers (4 point surround). I eventually have taken the Dxr3 card out of my system, and am looking for a better alternative, as I recommend you do.
Pass-through Cable Blues.......2000-04-26
My main gripe: When I hook my monitor up to my video card directly, my picture is crisp and clear at any resolution. When I hook my monitor up to the hardware decoder card and then use a pass-through cable to connect the decoder and my video, the picture looses a substantial amount of clarity.
(My video card is an ASUS RIVA TNT, and I have a 19" Hitachi SuperScan 751 monitor at home.)
I bought this DVD drive because it came with the RealMagic decoder card. I had read excellent reviews about the RealMagic, and although I was severly tempted by the Pioneer slot-loader, I gave into my impulse buying urge one day.
I really don't have TOO many complaints about this DVD drive. Since I'm used to swapping parts in and out, the physical installation was a snap. (Although when I added a new soundcard, I realized I had to redo my internal sound cables unfortunately and use a pass-through externally for audio as a temporary fix until I get more cables.) I really don't care for the recalibration process, but once you finally get it perfected, the image is finally fairly stable.
I realize my problem lies mostly with using a decoder card, but since it comes bundled with this drive, I thought I should share my experience.
Bad purchase.......2000-03-17
I really wanted to play DVDs at home and read some quick reviews and have had good experiences with Creative Labs prior. I was quite disappointed.
Until I installed the dvdr3wup.exe drivers, I always had to switch to 800x600 before running the Creative Labs software as suggested in the manual. Even after loading the software it seemed to be more stable when running in 800x600. It usually crashes if you try and fast-forward right after playing a movie. Just hitting buttons seemed to crash it regularly so I would always avoid hitting any buttons. Having Norton Antivirus running at the same time causes crashes. Even being that paranoid, it still crashes! I am unable to watch certain movies all the way through. It always seems to crash on chapter 3 of Ladyhawke and in several places in American Pie and will not let me watch the entire movie. When watching 12 Monkeys when it hit the last chapter it started playing chapter 4. I had to specifically chose the last chapter to see the end of the movie.
Creative Labs phone support hangs up on you, and they don't answer e-mail. This product has really hurt my opinion of Creative Labs.
I have two friends who also bought this product and had the same problems I had. We have all switched to Pioneer DVD drives with slot loader and RealMagic Hollywood Plus decoder cards and are much happier. I can not count the times the DXR3 crashed on me in the 3 months I used it. In the two months I've been using the Holywood Plus it's crashed on me once.
The quality is poorer than my Holywood Plus or Toshiba 3109 when playing movies. However, the loopback quality on the DXR3 is better than on the Holywood Plus. If you look closely on the Holywood Plus at 1280x1024 or above the text is a little fuzzy.
The user interface in the player is horrid in comparison to the Holywood Plus.
great dvd.......2000-01-26
this is a great dvd. it was every easy to install(i built my computer) and the software is great! only bad thing is once you go to full screen, i don't know how to minimize it. Other than that it is great! i recomend
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