Ok.. since nobody on the whole www seems to be willing to review this card I took it upon myself to buy it and see if it is as good as some ppl hope. First of all.. These are my personal opinions and experiences.
The X-card is a pci card which offers hardware decoding of DVD, VCD, SVCD, MP3 and Divx, mpeg4 media.
The card features composite video, svhs and even component output and support for HDTV for DVD. There is also an optional scart cable for use with RBG here in europe.
You connect your gfx card "through" the X-card. It still works if you don't but you will not be able to output to your vga screen.
However. You might want to not connect through the X-card because that results in a bad picture quality on your monitor at high resolutions.
Sort of a Voodoo 1 card Deja Vu there..
Installing the card was fairly effortless. There is no reall install program for the drivers though. You have to use the device manager, update driver. Or add new hardware and then find the inf. The player/interface install program is found in a folder called "disk 1",
Now.. the two burning questions I believe most want answered:
1. Will it really play all the divx movies I downloaded from the net?
2. Is the picture quality as good as you'd want it to be?
The answer to question no. 1 is clearly NO.
The x-card does NOT support divx 3.11 encoded media at all. And it on top of that does NOT support 1/4 pixel and global motion compensation in divx 4.02 and newer!!.
I have no clue as of what that means, but I do know that I have so far been unable to find one single divx file that will play on the X-Card due to these limitations!!
So for that purpose it is, today utterly worthless. Maybe new drivers will solve this.
It played all the svcd movies I tried. It did however have trouble "finding" the cd in the cdrom sometimes. It acted like there just wasnt any cd inserted. It also often failed to play svcd files off my harddrive.
The answer to question no. 2 is..
Well.. picture quality is ok. Not much more. It is still the best you can get from a mainstream card today, better than a Matrox G400.
It is however no way close to what you get from a good standalone DVD player. Such as for instance the Pioneer DV 444-S. A kick ass player in my opinion.
The card does offer PAL60 output which is good for european users that wish to watch NTSC material (24 or 30 frames/sec) and have a tv set that suports RGB, but not ntsc.
The player/interface is just rediculous. I could make a better looking shell myself. So ugly and amateur-ish! And it is very unstable also.
Not mentioning SLOW.
Btw...you can NOT add another entry in the playlist while you are listening/playing. You have to stop first.. arghhh!!!
Also.. while the player is installed it somehow prevents me from using media player, there is no video on the monitor!!! I got pissed at this and I tried to uninstall the card, which resulted in the uninstall program crashing!! GRRRRRRRR!!! And then it wouldn't let me run the uninstall again.. ARGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!.. I had to reinstall the drivers and the player.. And then do an uninstall again.. and it finally worked!!!
Regarding the build quality of the card... It looks very solid, but the svhs connector did not hold for more than three plugs/unplugs!
There is hardly any contact at all now.. argh.. Not mentioning the cable that goes from the gfx card to the gfx card is far too rigid.
Hard to connect.. and you have to bend it to make it fit at all!.. arghhh
Conclusion:
1. Does NOT play most of the DIVX stuff you will downoad from the net.
2. It has good picture quality if you find something that will in fact play.
3. It has a sucketysucky interface.
Hopefully new drivers will solve most of these problems. It is after all a new product.
But until that is done I see aboslutely no reason to own this card unless you only watch material that you encode yourself, so you can make sure that it actually works , and you are a total masochist. The interface is unbearable slow and unreliable!
OK.. again.. Thes are my PERSONAL opinions, experiences and conclusions. I can't guarantee that I did not make any errors when testing this card.
Maybe you will like this card just fine
Feel free to add your own opinions.
Edit: It seems it somehow conflicts with my SB Live.. Or is it the other way around?
The X-card is a pci card which offers hardware decoding of DVD, VCD, SVCD, MP3 and Divx, mpeg4 media.
The card features composite video, svhs and even component output and support for HDTV for DVD. There is also an optional scart cable for use with RBG here in europe.
You connect your gfx card "through" the X-card. It still works if you don't but you will not be able to output to your vga screen.
However. You might want to not connect through the X-card because that results in a bad picture quality on your monitor at high resolutions.
Sort of a Voodoo 1 card Deja Vu there..
Installing the card was fairly effortless. There is no reall install program for the drivers though. You have to use the device manager, update driver. Or add new hardware and then find the inf. The player/interface install program is found in a folder called "disk 1",
Now.. the two burning questions I believe most want answered:
1. Will it really play all the divx movies I downloaded from the net?
2. Is the picture quality as good as you'd want it to be?
The answer to question no. 1 is clearly NO.
The x-card does NOT support divx 3.11 encoded media at all. And it on top of that does NOT support 1/4 pixel and global motion compensation in divx 4.02 and newer!!.
I have no clue as of what that means, but I do know that I have so far been unable to find one single divx file that will play on the X-Card due to these limitations!!
So for that purpose it is, today utterly worthless. Maybe new drivers will solve this.
It played all the svcd movies I tried. It did however have trouble "finding" the cd in the cdrom sometimes. It acted like there just wasnt any cd inserted. It also often failed to play svcd files off my harddrive.
The answer to question no. 2 is..
Well.. picture quality is ok. Not much more. It is still the best you can get from a mainstream card today, better than a Matrox G400.
It is however no way close to what you get from a good standalone DVD player. Such as for instance the Pioneer DV 444-S. A kick ass player in my opinion.
The card does offer PAL60 output which is good for european users that wish to watch NTSC material (24 or 30 frames/sec) and have a tv set that suports RGB, but not ntsc.
The player/interface is just rediculous. I could make a better looking shell myself. So ugly and amateur-ish! And it is very unstable also.
Not mentioning SLOW.
Btw...you can NOT add another entry in the playlist while you are listening/playing. You have to stop first.. arghhh!!!
Also.. while the player is installed it somehow prevents me from using media player, there is no video on the monitor!!! I got pissed at this and I tried to uninstall the card, which resulted in the uninstall program crashing!! GRRRRRRRR!!! And then it wouldn't let me run the uninstall again.. ARGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!.. I had to reinstall the drivers and the player.. And then do an uninstall again.. and it finally worked!!!
Regarding the build quality of the card... It looks very solid, but the svhs connector did not hold for more than three plugs/unplugs!
There is hardly any contact at all now.. argh.. Not mentioning the cable that goes from the gfx card to the gfx card is far too rigid.
Hard to connect.. and you have to bend it to make it fit at all!.. arghhh
Conclusion:
1. Does NOT play most of the DIVX stuff you will downoad from the net.
2. It has good picture quality if you find something that will in fact play.
3. It has a sucketysucky interface.
Hopefully new drivers will solve most of these problems. It is after all a new product.
But until that is done I see aboslutely no reason to own this card unless you only watch material that you encode yourself, so you can make sure that it actually works , and you are a total masochist. The interface is unbearable slow and unreliable!
OK.. again.. Thes are my PERSONAL opinions, experiences and conclusions. I can't guarantee that I did not make any errors when testing this card.
Maybe you will like this card just fine
Feel free to add your own opinions.
Edit: It seems it somehow conflicts with my SB Live.. Or is it the other way around?
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