Hi-Val dvdrom at circuitcity has PowerDVD bundled

[Wiz]

Hi, I believe this has been mentioned already but there's something 'hot' about it that didn't get included.
I went in to Circuit City tonight and bought the Hi Val 12x DVD rom drive, and it said on the box that it included a soft dvd player.
So I got it home and slipped it into the box and took out the software CD.... It has PowerDVD 2.55 bundled!
I installed and went to their website and got the upgrade to version 3.0 and watched The Patriot.
Very much awesome and cool, and I got so much more than I expected, along with a $20.00 mail in rebate, so the drive will end up costing me $69.00 and the upgrade to PowerDVD 3.0 was $20.00 - so for $89.00 I got set up with everything I need.
Movie Play was smooth as silk on my new 64 meg Geforce2 card, I was concerned that my overclocked celeron @ 505mhz wouldn't cut it but man I'm in heaven!
Now if I can just see Compuwiz about that new cpu...
So thanks to bworrell for the pointer to CC, and to all a good night.

 

[AndrewR]

Since all the questions were deleted in the server problems -- what brand is the DVD drive? What does it say on the label?

 

[skywhr]

this has already been posted

 

[Edge17]

Never buy HiVal, and don't bother with their rebates. They are extremly difficult to deal with, and their phone lines are long distance. They will never send you the rebates, and recently they filed for bankruptcy. I bought a HiVal modem, burner, and cd-r pack, and sent in rebates for ALL of them. That was about 2 years ago. I still havn't recieved anything from them. The only news on them that I DID recieve was from the Better Buisness Bureau, saying that HiVal has filed for Bankruptcy. The fact that the BBB was able to contact me proves that HiVal had my Rebate information all along. To top it off, HiVal sells products which they bought from other, bigger companies. These products are sold to HiVal because they do not meet the standards of the bigger company. So the hardware is below average. It may be noisy, or have other problems that do not affect the functionality of the product, still make it below average. For example, my HiVal burner is extremly noisy, and I'm pretty sure that it is a JVC reject. HiVal products are rejects from better companies, but are below the standards of better companies. HiVal is a terrible company, and I never want to deal with their sorry asses again.

-- Edge

 

[Vegito]

Actually, I bought it and the rebate is NOT from hi-val, it's from Circuit City so you will get your money back. The DVD is a TopG, but hey, I got this for my friend's x-mas present so to me, it's an inexpensive gift.

 

[AndrewR]

HiVal did in fact file bankruptcy, but the name (not sure about the operations) were purchased by another entity and has resumed sales. It looks like they are now selling low end equipment in their boxes (TopG??? WTF??), but they were a great source for low cost products from quality manufacturers before they went under (CD-ROMs were often Toshiba, for instance). They didn't buy "low quality" products -- they bought OEM equipment and then rebadged it, which is a common practice. Ever hear of PC Power & Cooling, one of the most respected names in power supplies? That's how they operate.

It was a crappy company, don't get me wrong -- not sure how the new one is though. Looks like I'll avoid that DVD player though.

 

[shurato]

Yeah it was decent products but the name was pretty hokey... "hi-val" i dunno sounds like a generic brand at walmart for like laundry detergant or something.

 

[Vegito]

I got my pioneer cd rom scsi from them for 60 bucks almost two years ago when everywhere else was like 130+.. the good old days..

 

[AndrewR]

Anyone else receive the bankruptcy notification in the mail several months ago? I must have been on a list for a rebate though I don't think I had any outstanding with them so I was sent a copy of the bankruptcy filing with a Proof of Claim form. Rather funny.