Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
What a load of rubbish. The 2000 drivers are a piece of tatti! Doesn''t work at all keeps freezing even though I''ve made it the Master Drive with DMA.

Strengths:
None

Weaknesses:
The worst support service possible, keeps freezing even though all instructions have been followed. Machine config is also higher than the required spec!

Price Paid:  $45.00

Summary:
Aside from the great picture and sound quality, here's the ALTERNATE reasons why I love this card:

- you can play mpeg/dvd files off the hard drive (VOB, MPG, MPEG, M2V, MPA, etc.)

- as an addon to the above, you can also create a playlist of VOB files or MPEG files

- you can emulate your hard drive as a DVD drive (if you rip your DVD movie to a directory called VIDEO_TS on your hard drive) This is good if you want to make a MiniDVD and need to test it before buring it to a CDR.

- you can play MiniDVDs!!!

- you CAN play MP3 files using digital output on the Hollywood+ card (using "Eugene's" H+ output Winamp plugin)

- you can take "snapshots" of the video (assuming the DVD movie isn't copy-protected)

Strengths:
See summary below

Weaknesses:
None

Price Paid:  $70.00 from Cardiff

Summary:
This card is my favorite bit of kit for my pc. I have never had a problem running any dvds (although ive heard some have problems) and the frame rate and picture quality are pretty much perfect.

I bought this card in England for 50 quid, and have never looked back.


However, if anyone knows how to get round the win2000 problem im having, let me know :)

Strengths:
Easy to install on Win9X, good picture quality (much better than software decoders), superb frame rate, decent sound, updates from web site make it work with buggy movies soon after release (generally).

Weaknesses:
Cant get it to run with Win2000 at the moment. Keep getting a "valid driver not installed" message.

Similar Products Used:
Various software decoders

Price Paid:  $45.00

Summary:
Great card for the money, impressive picture quality,
great sound, Dolby Digital / DTS out, svhs/composite out
regionfree with patch, plays mpeg video files
all this for about 45$
Although i would like to see 4/6 speaker output trough soundcard for people that have soundcards with 4 or 6 outputs

Strengths:
Great picture quality,cheap,Dolby digital/DTS out

Weaknesses:
Nothing

Price Paid:  $50.00

Summary:
I got this as I was dissapointed by WinDVD and PowerDVD software decoders. It is a real Real Hollywood Plus not the Creative version. This piece impressed me. Took about 10 minutes to install and configure. Picture quality is as good as any budget DVD player I have owned. Even better watching on the computer screen. DD and DTS sound output is also great. Can be fine tuned quite a bit for optimum picture and sound quality. Some cool freware addons allow for the changeing of regional codes (Real Magic only allows 5 but freeware addon is limitless). Also allows for the removal of Macrovision.

All in all I give it a good rating. If you got a DVD drive but are dissapointed by its perfomance using software decoders, get it and be ready for real DVD capabilities. Say good-bye to slow action scenes, choppy video, un-synched audio. The Real Hoolywood Plus does not suffer from any of these downfalls

I tried it on WIn98SE, ME and Win2000 without a problem.

Sytem is:

Asus A7M266
AMD TB 1.33GHz (266FSB)
512MB DDR PC2100
nVidia TNT2 32MB video
Toshiba SDM-1502 DVD drive

Phoenix Gold S-video
Ultra-link digital audio

Pioneer Elite VSX-36TX reciever
Sony 32XBR200 television

Strengths:
Inexpensive, good audio and picture quality, easy to install and set-up.

Weaknesses:
Remote not included but would be nice to have. Also nice if it had output computer screen

Similar Products Used:
Pioneer DV-333, DV-F727, Panasonic A-300, A-110