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Just built a new system for an old friend back East- sort of "midrange", though these days that's a pretty righteous PC-
750 MHz Athlon
ASUS A7V MB
128 MB PC133 SDRAM
Guillimot GeForce Video Board
SB Live Platinum Edition
15 GB HD
ACER 14X DVD/40X CD drive
Samsun 770 17" viewable 1280X1024 flat panel LCD
Altec speakers with subwoofer
One of her specific requirements was DVD playback for movies, and because she's not a "techie", we went with the software DVD player that's very solid even with funny mastering tricks, and reasonable for sound and Video quality- PowerDVD 2.55, build 620. Results were basically as expected- once setup and dialed in, good image quality, excellent detail (scaled to 1280X1024, remember), good sound, only real shortcoming is that motion compensation is a little funky compared with WINDVD; some scenes just don't quite look as natural; but very close, and overall, the right choice for this person.
Within a week PowerDVD 3.0 should be available- reputedly with many enhancements. We'll see, and I'll be reporting back on my observations. At this point, WINDVD on a good system has the quality edge, but it sometimes coughs on some mastering/authoring quirks with a few titles- and what's odder, it isn't consistent system to system. On my Athlon HTPC, it's been good on many of the "bad" titles, so their may be some other interactions users don't yet understand.
Film at 11; updates in a week.
Regards,
JOn
Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....
750 MHz Athlon
ASUS A7V MB
128 MB PC133 SDRAM
Guillimot GeForce Video Board
SB Live Platinum Edition
15 GB HD
ACER 14X DVD/40X CD drive
Samsun 770 17" viewable 1280X1024 flat panel LCD
Altec speakers with subwoofer
One of her specific requirements was DVD playback for movies, and because she's not a "techie", we went with the software DVD player that's very solid even with funny mastering tricks, and reasonable for sound and Video quality- PowerDVD 2.55, build 620. Results were basically as expected- once setup and dialed in, good image quality, excellent detail (scaled to 1280X1024, remember), good sound, only real shortcoming is that motion compensation is a little funky compared with WINDVD; some scenes just don't quite look as natural; but very close, and overall, the right choice for this person.
Within a week PowerDVD 3.0 should be available- reputedly with many enhancements. We'll see, and I'll be reporting back on my observations. At this point, WINDVD on a good system has the quality edge, but it sometimes coughs on some mastering/authoring quirks with a few titles- and what's odder, it isn't consistent system to system. On my Athlon HTPC, it's been good on many of the "bad" titles, so their may be some other interactions users don't yet understand.
Film at 11; updates in a week.
Regards,
JOn
Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....
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