Schmapdi
11-27-2004, 06:32 PM
Hello,
I'm the proud owner of a Creative Labs DVD combo kit. For those of you who might not remember what this is let me refresh you.
Creative 2x DVD Rom
Creative Dxr2 Decoder card.
I bought this when it first came on the market circa 1997. And though it's done a bang up job it's getting a little long in the tooth. It's an odd and somewhat complicated little setup I've got going and I'm thinking about replacing the mentioned components with something a little more up to date. Unfortunately I've not really kept up with this little corner of the industry so I don't really no how to go about doing this. Some questions:
1. I have a 3 ghz Pentium 4 processor, so decoding wise I doubt I really need hardware anymore. But I'm reluctant to give up the fancy interlacing, etc the card offers. Plus my video card (Radeon 8500)'s tv out doesn't fill my whole screen/offers only 1024 x 768 resolution so it doesn't seem a viable option.
2. The sound needs to pass through my Sb live 5.1 sound card, as I need it to decode the dolby digital for me. (My reciever is only dolby digital ready).
Unless modern DVD playback programs can do this via software as well.
3. It would be nice, but not absolutely necessary if the player could output video files (divx, xvid) through the hardware as well.
4. I'd like a front slot loading DVD-Rom. I think they're neat. Pioneer has a nice one, but it seems impossible to find. Needless to say it needs to recognize the latest media (My DVD-rom, being built before anyone even dreamed of burning their own Dvd's doesn't recognize them).
Thanks for answering any/all of my questions. I'm certainly open to hardware suggestions as well. I'd like to keep the cost of the Drive under 50 bucks, because that seems reasonable for a reader. I'm not sure what a decoder card would cost anymore, but definitely not something I'm looking to spend more than 80-100 bucks on.
Congratulations for making it to the end of an extremely long post.
I'm the proud owner of a Creative Labs DVD combo kit. For those of you who might not remember what this is let me refresh you.
Creative 2x DVD Rom
Creative Dxr2 Decoder card.
I bought this when it first came on the market circa 1997. And though it's done a bang up job it's getting a little long in the tooth. It's an odd and somewhat complicated little setup I've got going and I'm thinking about replacing the mentioned components with something a little more up to date. Unfortunately I've not really kept up with this little corner of the industry so I don't really no how to go about doing this. Some questions:
1. I have a 3 ghz Pentium 4 processor, so decoding wise I doubt I really need hardware anymore. But I'm reluctant to give up the fancy interlacing, etc the card offers. Plus my video card (Radeon 8500)'s tv out doesn't fill my whole screen/offers only 1024 x 768 resolution so it doesn't seem a viable option.
2. The sound needs to pass through my Sb live 5.1 sound card, as I need it to decode the dolby digital for me. (My reciever is only dolby digital ready).
Unless modern DVD playback programs can do this via software as well.
3. It would be nice, but not absolutely necessary if the player could output video files (divx, xvid) through the hardware as well.
4. I'd like a front slot loading DVD-Rom. I think they're neat. Pioneer has a nice one, but it seems impossible to find. Needless to say it needs to recognize the latest media (My DVD-rom, being built before anyone even dreamed of burning their own Dvd's doesn't recognize them).
Thanks for answering any/all of my questions. I'm certainly open to hardware suggestions as well. I'd like to keep the cost of the Drive under 50 bucks, because that seems reasonable for a reader. I'm not sure what a decoder card would cost anymore, but definitely not something I'm looking to spend more than 80-100 bucks on.
Congratulations for making it to the end of an extremely long post.