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Written By Dave Pitlyuk

The PC-DVD from Creative Labs has 7 different features.  It has a tv-out for watching DVD on a television.  The only problem I found with this was that when I did hook it up to my TV I could not connect it to my reciever because it was not Dolby Digital.  Basically the only way I could get sound was from the computer speakers, which sound nothing like a rack system.  Second is the DVD player for the pc.  I found this very nice and good quality, I have to admit it's not perfect though.  The image looks a little blury but not enough to make a difference.  Sometimes there is flickering of either black or blue lines, but this is also hardly noticeable.  Another problem was that if I did not have the movie playing at full screen a lot of blue would appear in the image, so the only option I had was to watch it from full screen.  I have to admit though....when I hooked it up to the tv the image was perfect and I was very impressed.  It also acts a 20X cd-rom drive, which is a good feature if you do not have a regular cd-rom drive hooked up to your computer along with the DVD drive.  It is also a second generation 2X DVD-ROM drive.   This means that each disc can hold up to 17 gigabytes, and there is no more incompatiblity with CD-R discs.  These were the problems with the first generation DVD drives.  Creative Labs also now has the option for a 3rd generation DVD drive that you can buy which instead of a 2X DVD-ROM drive it is 5X.  This option is better if you are using the dvd drive for things other than movies, like games for example, because when I ran any DVD movies, they all played perfectly, in fact the games did too, so I did not see the need for the extra speed.     It is also a VideoCD which gives you the option to play VideoCD's in the drive.  It also uses Dxr2 technology which supposedly enhances the picture, makes a flicker-free picture, no more combing effects, and zoom in without the image being very pixelated.  I can't really tell you if this works because I have not used other DVD-ROM drives.  The last is that it supports Dolby Digital (AC-3) Audio.  This allows you to hook up the DVD-ROM drive to a stereo system that has 5 different channels for an AWESOME sound.  It came with the DVD player, the drive, a decoder board, Claw, and Wing Commander IV.  The games were good, but I was a little upset that it did not come with some kind of sample movie, or like other DVD drives that come with a sample cd that comes with a variety of music videos.  I also found the player to be VERY good, you can change a lot of the settings, and when I downloaded the update it got even better.   Plus Creative Labs extended their warrenty to 7 days a week which is helpful but it is still not toll free.

Installation on a DVD drive is a little bit different than a regular CD-ROM drive.  Especially since it comes with a decoder card, so that the DVD drive, the card, and the sound card need to be all interconnected with eachother.  The hardest part is getting everything connected...you need to put the DVD-ROM in just like a CD-ROM would, then put an audio cable from the drive to the decoder card which goes in a PCI slot.  Then from the decoder card there is another audio cable which goes into your sound card.  THEN after that you have to put a cable from the back of the decoder card into the video card and the monitor cable into the decoder card.  That's only for having the DVD drive hooked up to the computer.  It all seems overwhelming but the thick instruction booklet that comes with the drive explains everything nicely, and in no time I was up and running.  I had no problems with the drivers, and the worst thing that happened was I cut my finger putting the hardware into the computer.

Specifications found from Creative Labs

DVD Drive:

Features Supported Depending On DVD Title:

Minimum System Requirements:

System Tested On:

Benchmarking done with SiSoft Sandra 98

Benchmarking done with Warner Music Group "Does DVD Volume 2" DVD disc

CD-ROM Cache Information:

Benchmark Breakdown:

Comparisons: