Hello Elizabeth,

Take what follows as one person's experience.  I bought a Toshiba SD-M1212
DVD-ROM kit that included a RealMagic Hollywood+ decoder card back around
the end of August.  The Toshiba drive seems to work fine, but I have not had
good luck with the RealMagic Hollywood+ decoder card that came bundled with
it.  The first one had a defective EEPROM on it, so I had to return it to
get it replaced.  The second one still is not working properly.  It will
work immediately after I install the card and the drivers, but if I reboot
and try the DVD decoder, I get BOD's and lock ups.  This probably is
somesort of driver issue, but I haven't taken the time to go back and try to
find a work around.  Also, you have to patch your main video card through
the decoder card with an external cable (similiar to Voodoo2 hookups), and I
see a very noticable image degradation with this arrangement.  This is
enough that I would only want the decoder card patched in when I was playing
a DVD.  So, in my opinion a software DVD player is the better choice for me.
It also saves a PCI slot and an IRQ.

My experience with software DVD players is that I could not get the Zoran
SoftDVD player that came bundled with my Diamond MX300 sound card to work
(Blue Screen errors).  I was able to successfully use the trial version of
PowerDVD and Cinemaster's software player (I believe the Cinemaster software
is bundled with many ATI cards).  More recently, I received InterVideo's
WinDVD, which was offered as part of my Voodoo3 3000 package (you had to
send in a coupon to get the program), and I have been happy with it's
performance.

My system includes the ABIT BH6 MB, Celeron 300a tried at the default 300mhz
and my usual 450mhz setting, 128mb of SDRAM, Voodoo3 3000 video card, and
Diamond's MX300 soundcard.

HTH,

John


----- Original Message -----
From: Elizabeth Boston <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, November 29, 1999 9:22 PM
Subject: 1st DVD system


> Good evening all,
>         I have a customer looking for an estimate on a system with a DVD
> drive. Since I have no previous experience with DVD, I thought I
> would ask here.
>         What are good or not good brands to use?
>
>         Is there anything special to know about setting it up?
>
>         Does it only work with specific video cards?
>
>
>         Elizabeth Boston
>        [log in to unmask]
>

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