is a hollywood+ card a good investment?

[maximus]

just want to know

 

[JackBurton]

It is not a good investment if you are going to just watch DVD movies. I use PowerDVD to watch ALL my DVD movies and the picture quality is the same if not better than the Hollywood card. Now if you play DVD games (I'm one of a few that actually like some of the games out for DVD), then you have to have a decoder card. Playing DVD games through software just blows!

 

[(Chanse)]

I've had one for a couple months and it is definitely worth it. The quality is better than software methods, at least on all the machines I've seen, and they're pretty cheap anyway.

 

[Eug]

If you have a TV, you're better off buying a real DVD player.

 

[(Chanse)]

I was going to do that myself, but I bought the realmagic with a Philips dvd, and bought this http://www.x10.com The DVD Anywhere. Its a wireless R/F solution for dvd and mp3 playing. comes with a universal remote

 

[Comp10]

If your processor is at least 400mhz then you will get better image quality by using a software decoder such as PowerDVD. If your processor is slower than 400mhz, then a hardware decoder card is probably a good idea.

 

[Choy]

Having tried both the pc and the "consumer" method for some time I'd say go with a real player if you are serious about seeing DVDs.

Another way to go with more options is the software decoder and a tv-out. This makes it possible to see downloaded movies (Not Hollywood movies of course )

 

[Workin']

Like Eug says, if all you want to do is watch DVD's on your TV, get a "real" DVD player.

But if you want to watch DVD's, AVI movies, Video CD's, and play games like Quake 1,2,3, get a video card with good TV-out. The H+ won't let you watch anything on its TV-out except DVD's.

If you are only going to watch DVD's on your computer monitor, then there is no reason to get a H+ if you have a 400 MHz CPU or faster, or an ATi, GeForce, or SiS video card. Those video cards all have at least one component of DVD decoding built in to their chip, and the ATi has two DVD decoding functions built in.

 

[Yoshi]

Nothing you buy for a computer is a good "investment"

 

[Eug]

By the way, many DVD players also play VCD. I have a DVD player for my computer, and two for my stereo system. Trying to watch a movie on a computer with TV out is just a pain in the @ss.

Of the few times I've had to chance software to hardware decoding, software always won (at least using ATI DVD player).

 

[helloworld]

<< Now if you play DVD games (I'm one of a few that actually like some of the games out for DVD), then you have to have a decoder card. Playing DVD games through software just blows! >>



That statement is SO incorrect!

Why would playing games off DVD media differ instead of playing it off of a CD? Example: a game wants to read a .wav file from a DVD disc. How does that differ from reading the same .wav file from a CD? It doesn't! The important difference between a CD and DVD is that the DVD can hold more data, that's all. You don't need a decoder card to read data off a DVD disc.

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[PistachioByAzul]

If you have a K6-X based system, you'll damn well need one.