Designs' Hollywood Plus

This DVD decoder card is superior to most (if not all) of its competitors in its solid support for the special features found on many of today's DVD discs. For example, the special features section of The Matrix disc does not play properly on the DVD players supplied with ATI or Matrox graphics cards (etc.), but Hollywood Plus handles it with aplomb.

Product:  REALmagic Hollywood Plus

From: Sigma Designs (http://www.realmagic.com)

For: Windows 95/98, NT (Driver v1.8 tested under Win98. Windows 2000 support is also available in beta 1.0 form.)

Price: The OEM version is about US$65 (C$109). The retail version ships with Star Trek: First Contact "VideoSaver" screen saver and sells for approx. C$160.

Pros: TV-out and Dolby Digital support. Excellent image quality. Hardware decoder ensures smooth playback of DVD movies on Pentium 133 or greater systems. Optional infrared remote control. Co-exists well with other DVD drivers/players, such as PC Friendly (i.e., The Matrix) or ATI DVD Player.

Cons: Lacks the AC-3 downmixing feature of Creative Labs' Dxr3. Pass-through cable degrades image quality slightly.

Looking for a PC-based DVD player? The REALmagic Hollywood Plus is, we think, the best in its class, with outstanding image quality and a robust feature set. We torture-tested the card with discs that made our other DVD players fail, and the Hollywood Plus handled 'em all. Thus, if one attempts to add the Hollywood Plus to a system with an existing software or hardware-assisted player such as the ATI DVD Player that comes with several ATI graphics cards, including the All in Wonder 128 and Rage 128 cards we tested this product with, the Hollywood Plus improves the DVD playback and adds features. And why, you might be wondering, would want to add another DVD player to a system that already had one? Well, if The Matrix or Ronin discs are any indication of future "PC Friendly" DVD titles (and they almost certainly are!), you'll definitely be missing some features if you are stuck with the DVD Player applications that ship with ATI or Matrox graphics cards. The Matrix disc, for example, doesn't play its "special features" content properly on these players. So, you add the Hollywood Plus and what happens? You gain the special features, Dolby Surround sound and, if you're lucky enough to have a Pro Logic decoder, AC-3/DTS (Dolby Digital) output as well.

When we installed the Hollywood Plus, both the ATI and PC Friendly DVD players on our system continued functioning. Image quality was very good -- roughly on par with the quality of the ATI Rage Fury's DVD decoder, and slightly better than that of the Creative Labs Dxr2 Encore PC-DVD player. (In fact, the successor to the Dxr2, the Dxr3, features the Sigma Designs chipset!)

Most importantly, though, was the fact that all the features of the software supplied with the Hollywood Plus seemed to work correctly in our tests. This is more than we can say for either the ATI or PC Friendly players. In fact, several important features of The Matrix DVD don't work with the ATI or Matrox drivers -- but they do work with the Hollywood Plus.

For example, when you play The Matrix with the ATI Player, the intro sequence, like the movie, is displayed in 16:9 wide-screen format, with black bars on the top and bottom of your monitor. The Hollywood Plus allows you this wide-screen view, or a "pan and scan" mode that crops the image. In this mode, you get a full-screen image, but lose some of the imagery. However, the ATI player (version 6.00) has a problem with this mode -- it doesn't display The Matrix in Pan and Scan mode at all. And, although The Matrix doesn't support it, there's also a Letterbox mode available in the Sigma player. Full marks to Sigma for this -- and hisses to ATI for yet another broken feature in its player.

The PC Friendly player performs yet another variation. It lacks the option to set wide-screen, letterbox or "pan and scan" modes. Thus, it shows a full-screen image, but simply scales the wide-screen image to full screen size, resulting in a "thin" picture during the opening sequence.  Lame!  The rest of the movie plays properly, in wide-screen format, on all three players.

We also tested the optional REALmagic Remote Control, a fairly standard infrared remote controller that comes with an IR "eye." The eye, which is designed to sit on or near your TV or monitor, plugs into a serial port on your PC, allowing the remote to wirelessly control all of the functions of the REALmagic DVD Station software -- just like a "real" DVD player. When combined with the card's ability to output to a large-screen TV (courtesy of its S-VHS or composite outputs), this provides a convenient and very "couch potato-friendly" viewing experience. Once the supplied software is installed and the Remote Control utility has been launched, the remote can launch, control and quit the DVD player and can switch between the monitor and an external TV, if connected, but cannot shut down the PC or perform other non REALmagic-related functions.

Conclusion: The REALmagic Hollywood Plus is the most trouble-free PC-based DVD decoder we've tested yet.

REALmagic Hollywood Plus Alpha 1.1 now Windows 2000 compatible: Sigma Designs has released a beta driver for its REALmagic Hollywood Plus for use under Windows 2000. Details at the Sigma Designs Web Site

Tech tip: the Hollywood Plus does not like to share IRQs. You may have the best results with it installed in PCI slot #3,4 or 5.

For Further Reading

• http://www.overclockers.com.au/techstuff/dvd1/index.shtml
• http://mmadb.no/hwplus/ Sigma Hollywood Plus / DVD Station FAQ and info on how to eliminate the need for a pass-through cable. (External links are beyond our control.)