Creative Encore Dxr3 12x DVD-ROM

• Windows 95/98/NT4
• Pentium 166Mhz
• 32Mb RAM
• Available PCI slot
• SVGA graphics adaptor with 2Mb RAM (min.res. 640×480)
• Soundblaster or other Windows-compatible soundcard
• Speakers or headphones

N.B. This product was reviewed in 2000 and has since been superceded.Please check www.europe.creative.comfor the latest products availableI’ve been having a love affair over the past two years or so,but it’s not a secret one. In fact, my fiancee knows all about it. It beganwhen I first discovered the world of DVD.

When I first bought a Dxr2 decoder card with the Creative DVD-ROM drive,at around £225 it was considerably cheaper than the standalone modelson the shelf and with my TV in close enough distance to the PC, linking tothe big screen wasn’t a problem. Since moving house, the TV is a couple offeet further away, but a male-female joining lead solved the problem.

What hit me first, apart from the stunning pictures produced, was when HomeCinema Choice’s gadget guru Bob Tomalski gave the product a glowingreview. There was me originally thinking that a PC item for a third of theprice of some players around at the time couldn’t hope to match their quality,when it was found to score higher than some of those very standalones.

Hence, I had high hopes for the Dxr3, although I had heard over the past fewmonths that the TV-out quality wasn’t as good, but a phone call to Creativethemselves confirmed that the latest drivers at the time solved any suchproblems. Now I have experienced this PC DVD setup for myself, their wordswere a falsehood.

So, I’ve said how good the Dxr2 is, but what are the advantages with theDxr3? First, the software includes support for DTS: Digital Theatre Sound.It’s impressive and in some cases sounds more meaty, but I have very fewDVDs with DTS compared to those I have which aren’t Region 2 (see later forwhy this is important) and for some reason it didn’t play the DTS bonus trackon the Region 2Eagles: Hell Freezes Over.

The DVD drive is a 12-speed one, used for transferring DVD-ROM material notshowing DVD films at any faster than standard single speed, so if you planto install many programs from DVD-ROMs (of which there aren’t very manyyet), consider this an advantage over the 5-speed DVD-ROM drive whichaccompanied the Dxr2 card.

Two DVDs themselves are also included – the IMAX film Super Speedwayand a DVD-ROM edition of Outcast, which includes plenty ofbehind-the-scenes-type info about the game.

And now the problems…

• 1. Firstly and probably most importantly, no official firmware update has beenreleased to allow region-free playback. For the uninitiated, this is asoftware patch that updates the drive and stops it complaining every timeyou, for example, put in an American DVD instead of the British ones you’remore used to buying.

  When you install the kit in the first place, it asks you for a region andthis can only be changed a further four times. After that you’re stuck withit. So, the answer would normally be to ignore than and pay a visit towww.visualdomain.net,where Remote Selector can be downloaded and instructed toselect a particular region or disable the region check altogether!

• 2. After pausing or moving to another chapter, the picture stutters threetimes (sound is fine though) before carrying on as normal. It occasionally doesthis at other times for no reason. I can understand it happening while I’min DOS (yes, I use an antequated email program but prefer it to anythingin Windows), but have had no such problems when using Windows programs suchas Wordperfect 6.1 at the same time with the Dxr2. When using the Dxr3, yesthere are problems.
• 3. The card is slow to process things when skipping through severalchapters at a time.
• 4. Pressing stop takes half-a-second to stop rather than instantlylike the Dxr2,
• 5. Moving between menus is a now a pain with this. I use the keyboard asa rule and when changing menus, it seems to make the system ‘Alt-TAB’ away tosomething else so I can’t access the menu functions and need to ‘Alt-TAB’ backagain. Why?! This never happened with the Dxr2. A workaround is to use theaforementioned Remote Selector fromwww.visualdomain.net.
• 6. Setting the sound was initially problematic. For both the Dxr2 and Dxr3decoder cards there is an ‘advanced’ tab, but only in the latter is ithighlighted and there I had to select “AC3” for Dolby Digital sound, but itwas something I had to find out for myself.
• 7. Unlike the Dxr2, you can’t see the DVD picture window on both the PCand the TV at the same time. Creative’s online support confirmed this butoffered no reason why this should be the case.
• 8. For some inexplicable reason, I heard no main menu sound in some casesthat I tried. One such DVD, for example, was Made in Britain.

Many thanks to Erwin van den Berg fromwww.visualdomain.netwho answers some of the above questions with technical info that proves whythe Dxr3 is a sub-standard piece of kit compared to its older brother:

• 1. DTS: The Dxr2 can also output DTS on the spdif, only Creative refuses toupgrade the Dxr2 software to allow this. Their argument that the Dxr2 was madebefore DTS came to dvd is bogus.

  Alas, this doesn’t mean that you can use Dxr3 software with the Dxr2 cardto solve the problem.

• 2. The Dxr3 is a RealMagic Hollywood+ as you probably know, and it is a muchcheaper board than the Dxr2 due to intergration of chips. The reason for Creativeto upgrade is simply one of production costs. However, the Hollywood+ does lessprocessing in the decoder and leans thus more on the CPU. Sound decoding forinstance is done on the CPU. Also the H+ has only 1 ramdac, so you can only havevga output OR tv output since it is handled in the same chip. The Dxr2 has a lotof chips, each with their own function.

  The C-Cube Ziva decrypts and decodes thestream (audio and video) and outputs a CCIRR 601 video stream to both the tvencoder and the vga ‘linedoubler’ (the so called Dxr2, Dynamic eXtentedResolution, which converts interlaced signal to progressive and thus ‘doubles’ thenumber of lines) and outputs the audio directly via i2s to the onboard dac andspdif transmitter. So the Dxr2 handles almost all dvd processing, the cpu only hasto navigate and deliver the data from the dvd to the Dxr2 board. The name ‘Dxr3’has nothing to do with line tripling.

• 3. The components used on the Dxr2 are really first class (maybe even ‘high-end’),like the Burr-Brown DAC (also used in the most expensive Denon processors) andBrooktree tv encoder (with 10bits processing in a time that all ‘normal’ dvdplayer only used 8 or 9 bits per color).

  This also means that the board is probably pretty expensive. The Dxr2 is basedon a reference board made by Auravision, the makers of the VxP524 (Dxr2) chip.They only changed the Analog Devices ADV7175 tv encoder for the Brooktree one.Nice detail is that the ADV7175 is used on the H+ and thus on the Dxr3 (althoughsome people claim there board uses a ADV7170 or even the brooktree).

  The only real problem with the Dxr2 is the AuraVision AnP82 Analog vga overlay chip,which is really crap. So the Dxr2 is unbeatable for tv and analog audio, the Dxr3 isbetter for use on a PC monitor (although I would recommend a software player likePowerDVD if your PC is fast enough (P2 300). I really do not understand peopleupgrading from a Dxr2 to a Dxr3 if they use it on tv. Also upgrading from a 2x to5x/6x/8x/10x/12x drive is useless, DVD video is 1x !

  It’s simply a budget board at a premium price! As a result, the marketingpeople couldn’t name it the Dxr1, because nobody would buy it so theypretended that it is a better board, so they could even ask a higher price andmake much more profit.

Overall, I’m baffled. Why does a next-generation product have so many thingschanged for the worse? It’s not necessary and is really annoying. There’s athick manual included but it’s largely unhelpful past installation as itjust details the same thing in a million languages.

Hence, for the time being and until the decoder software problems and thelack of region-free playback in the drive can be resolved, I shall be stickingwith my original Dxr2 card and 5-speed drive setup and I’d advise everyoneto plump for a Dxr2 and never a Dxr3.

And yes, I did try the latest drivers (this review was placed online onOctober 2nd, 2000 and the beta drivers online were from June 2000) but tono avail.

This product is also rather overpriced now. As I mentioned earlier, the priceof my original setup was very competitive compared to the stand-alonemarket. These days with the age of the easily-made-region-free Wharfdale 750player which only costs a penny under £180, sub-£100 playerson the way and decent PC DVD decoder cards and drives available for around£60 apiece… well, you do the math.

And don’t forget the Playstation 2, due out on November 24th, seeminglywith improved decoding ability to rival dedicated DVD players. Until I canget hold of one of those, I’ll have to stick with a PC DVD variant – forone reason I’ve run out of plug sockets!

OVERALL