Encore Dxr2

Product: Encore Dxr2 DVD kit

From: Creative Labs

Price: about C$375

Strongest Competitors:

• Pacific Digital
• Hitachi
• Toshiba
• Diamond Multimedia (Toshiba mechanism)
• Sony 5x drive

When we installed a Creative Labs Encore Dxr2 DVD kit, we were delighted to see that the DVD drive is recognized by Windows 98's boot floppy as a standard IDE device, which allowed our boot floppy to access  CDs in the drive (handy for installing a new OS!). When reading CDs, the drive behaves like a 20x CD-ROM. (where 1x = 150 Kbps).  It was also able to read CD-RW, CD-R, and, of course, DVD discs. The performance of DVD drives, incidentally, is measured in multiples of 1400 Kbps. Therefore, the Encore drive, with its 2700 Kbps transfer rate, is said to be a 2x DVD drive. More technical specs on the unit can be found at the Creative Labs web site.

We were mildly disconcerted to see that the pass-through cable that routes the output from a standard video card into and back out of the Creative Labs DVD decoder card seemed to produce a small amount of interference in our video display. It was barely visible, but definitely present. Moving the DVD controller card to a slot further away from our AGP graphics card didn't seem to solve the problem, but happily, changing the video configuration options eliminated the interference. The unit was a breeze to set up and the movie playback performance was excellent. Total cost: about C$375. (US$279.)

Creative also sells its DVD drive separately for $219, without the MPEG-2 decoder card. In this case, a software decoder such as is included with some OEM versions of ATI's AGP-based Rage Pro graphics cards can be used to view the DVD data. (Note, however, that software-based decoding has more onerous demands on the CPU than a hardware decoder.)

The Encore, like all the second-generation DVD drives we've seen, can also read CD-R discs. (A description of the differences between first- and second generation DVD is in an article on our website entitled Recordable DVD and CDRW.) With the Adaptec UDF software (described in detail here), a MultiRead-compatible DVD drive like the Encore can read CD-RW discs as well.

Of course, different drives have varying performance and capabilities.  The Creative Labs Encore unit, for example, has a line doubling feature that reduces the digital artifacting that plagues most players. Although the Creative Labs driver works well under Win98, you cannot use the Microsoft-supplied DVD player applet. Windows 98 includes "built in" support only for the Toshiba drive, such as is supplied with the Diamond Multimedia kit.

Installation:

On a system with only an IDE hard drive configured as a Primary Master IDE device, the DVD's default configuration as an IDE Slave device worked well. However, when we tested it on a system with a SparQ drive, we found that, although the drive could read CDs, DVD discs didn't play. The solution was found in Creative Labs' Tech support database. It informed us that the DVD drive needs to be the next available drive letter after any IDE or SCSI harddrives. Alphabetically, there should be no ZIP, JAZZ, tape or CD-ROM drives with drive letters before that of the DVD drive.

To change the drive letter assignment in your system, power down and disconnect all the affected drives except the DVD drive. Then boot to Windows 95 Safe Mode and remove the drives (including the DVD drive) from Device Manager, then restart to normal mode and the DVD drive will be reassigned the lowest available drive letter.

Next, power down and reconnect the other drives. Restart the system and they will be readded with drive letters higher than the DVD drive.

If this doesn't fix the problem, Creative recommends replacing the files WINASPI.DLL, WNASPI32.DLL and APIX.VXD from a working Win95B installation. This solved our problem getting the drive to run under Win98.

We also tested the version 3.0 update of the Encore DVD software available from Creative Labs' FTP site (Comprehensive FTP Site Index) with good results. It adds several useful features, including slow-motion, AutoLaunch and a few other tricks as well as an improved interface.

Software:

The Encore DVD drive worked very well in our tests of the discs bundled with it. A sci-fi action game called Wing Commander 4, starring Malcolm (Clockwork Orange, O Lucky Man) McDowall and Mark Hamill (Star Wars) is included, as is a cartoon-style game of swashbuckling pirate cats called "Claw."

We tested it with several other DVD titles, too. We watched a DVD version of the movie Terminator 2 and marvelled at the extras on the DVD disc: biographies of the actors, production notes, theatrical trailers and more. The Austin Powers disc has several scenes that were deleted from the movie, including two alternate endings, commentaries on every scene by the director and Mike Myers, plus several extra goodies, including animations, a spy-genre retrospective and "Music to shag to."

We also checked out the the first entirely computer-generated DVD-ROM disc we've seen: Planetary Traveler, from Third Planet Entertainment. This disc features animated landscapes built with Bryce3D, a 3D program from Metacreations. Despite its occasionally overbearing music, it is a sightseeing tour unlike anything else. Another notable new DVD title is Microsoft's Encarta 98, which exploits the enourmous capacity of DVD discs to fit more multimedia content than ever on a single disc. Encarta 98 DVD edition includes an amazing "Virtual Globe" feature that, for example, not only allowed us to locate our home town on the map, but could also zoom right down to street level and locate interesting tourist destinations in a number of metropolitan areas. Alternate views provided us with sights and sounds of the cities, topographical relief maps of the areas, statistics and much more. Very cool.

For Additional Reading:

• Digital Versatile Disc 1997 Market Assessment, Competition & Opportunities (a report costing US$1095)
• How the DVD format will impact the education market (Pioneer)
• DVD-ROM & DVD-RW FAQs (Sony)
• The Rainmaker DVD Primer (DVD authoring info and general FAQ)
• EMedia Professional has an interesting technical article on the role of UDF in CD authoring.

Related stories

• CD-Recorders (Updated Jan. 29, 1998) - Reviews of CD recorders and CDR authoring software.
• Mass Storage Solutions (Updated Aug. 22) - Backup strategies and evaluations of various technologies.
• Mass Storage Part 2 - Hard Drives (Updated Sept. 5) - a not-too-technical primer on how to add a 2nd drive.
• Recordable DVD and CDRW, etc. (Updated Nov. 24, 1997) - A report on the latest developments.
• HP SureStore CD-Writer Plus 7110e    (Updated Mar. 4, 1998) - a review of this parallel port CDRW drive for Win95/NT   (Replaced by the 7200e in Canada) .
• Adding UDF Support (6/10/98)- Universal disc support is the native format of DVD, CD-RW and "DirectCD."
• Hot DVD Discs (3/30/98 ) - Reviews of Carl Sagan's Contact on DVD, Austin Powers,  Terminator 2 and more.