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• Site News
  Time: 12:48 GMT Source: ActiveDVD Posted By: Byron

  We have a few new reviews coming up this week including the new software DVD player WinDVD. We will be posted an in depth review of it this weekend.

   

• Jerry Maguire - Review
  Time: 12:48 GMT Source: ActiveDVD Posted By: Byron

  Alex has posted his review of the UK version of Jerry Maguire. Here is a snippet from the review:

  The DVD version of this film has great picture quality and excellent sound, but the main reason people buy DVD's is to get those little extras. Sadly Jerry Maguire doesn't have those added extras. There is the choice to choose scenes from the main menu, but that is about it.

• Big Star DVD Opens with Sale
  Time: 15:39 GMT Source: ActiveDVD Posted By: Cliff

  Always complaining that DVDs are too expensive??? Well, BigStarDVD is having a sale, 30% off of all their DVDs, among other great deals. I don't know about you, but any chance that I can get a break on buying a DVD, I take it!

• The Opposite Of Sex - Review
  Time: 15:39 GMT Source: ActiveDVD Posted By: Byron

  I have posted my review of the movie The Opposite Of Sex. Here is a piece from the review:

  The Opposite Of Sex could have turned into a mess if it only had the occasional funny line and just a couple of good performances, but thankfully that doesn't happen, even Lyle Lovett playing a Sheriff, with one eye on Lucia puts himself about well. Writer-director Roos does allow himself to fall back on stereotypes and campiness, especially in the gay character played by Johnny Galecki (Roseanne, I Know What You Did Last Summer). However, that's not enough to do any damage to the movie.

• The Negotiator - Review
  Time: 14:39 GMT Source: ActiveDVD Posted By: Byron

  I have posted my review of the movie The Negotiator. Here is a piece from the review:

  The Negotiator DVD is widescreen and is show in 2.35 : 1 maintaining the aspect ratio shown in the cinema. The picture quality is excellent throughout and the sound is also top quality with clear dialogue never being overpowered by music or background sounds. Now onto the special features. The negotiator comes with a couple of documentaries, one that profiles real-life police negotiators and the other a behind-the-scenes documentary. The two documentaries aren't bad, but I would have liked to have seen a few interviews with some of the actors involved on the movie too.

   

• New Affiliate
  Time: 12:55 GMT Source: ActiveDVD Posted By: Byron

  We now host the website - DVD Infomatrix - This website is the one where you can download The Region Selector program, which allows you to change the regions on a number of the top software DVD players around.

   

• Site News
  Time: 12:40 GMT Source: ActiveDVD Posted By: Byron

  It has been a slow few days for DVD news it seems, hopefully this will change from now on. We have a number of new reviews on the way. Reviews of the following software and hardware players, WinDVD, REALmagic Hollywood Plus. Reviews of the following DVD titles, The Opposite Of Sex, The Negotitator, The Truman Show, The Exorcist, Out Of Sight and The Evil Dead.

• Long Awaited DVD-Audio Standard Adds Dolby AC-3
  Time: 23:40 GMT Source: EE Times Posted By: Byron

  After more than three years of labor pains, the DVD Forum has announced the establishment of a format for DVD-Audio. The Forum's Steering Committee approved the format, dubbed Version 1.0, at its meeting earlier this month and will have the DVD-Audio Format book published shortly. DVD-Audio is the fifth DVD format to be put into place, following DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM and DVD-R.

• IBM To Use Sigma Designs' REALmagic DVD Decoder In New DVD Option Kits
  Time: 12:40 GMT Source: Press Release Posted By: Byron

  Sigma Designs Inc., one of the leaders in PC DVD/MPEG-2 decoder technology, announced today that IBM Corporation has selected its REALmagic Hollywood Plus playback card as one of the components of its new IBM 6X DVD-ROM Internal IDE Option Kit.

• Antz On The Way
  Time: 23:35 GMT Source: The Digital Bits Posted By: Byron

  Get out your bug spray - ANTZ! is coming to a DVD player near you on March 23rd. And it will definitely be worth the wait. For an SRP of $34.99, here's what you get:
  
  - DreamWorks Signature Selection
  - Anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1)
  - Dual-layered DVD
  - Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio
  - Full-length Director's Commentary
  - Behind-the-scenes Production Featurette - The Making of ANTZ!
  - Director's Inside Look - The Basics of CGI Animation & Early Design Process
  - Production Notes
  - Cast & Filmmaker Bios
  - Theatrical Trailer
  - 4 TV Spots

  
  Naturally, in true DreamWorks style, the disc menus will feature full-motion graphics and sound. The Director's Inside Look will show the special facial system and development process used to create the main characters. And the disc will also be the first, fully CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) film to be released on the DVD format. All in all, a very nifty batch of extras. Can't wait!

   

• Alien Box Set Moves Forward
  Time: 23:17 GMT Source: Fox Posted By: Byron

  20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has apparently decided to move the street date for their Alien series DVD's up, from June 8th to Tuesday, June 1st. The decision was apparently made last week.

Monday 8th February 1999

New Region Selector

• Region Selector 1.61 Released
  Time: 14:17 GMT Source: Region Selector Website Posted By: Byron

  A new version of Region Selector for Software DVD players has been released, this is version 1.61 and features support for Cinemaster/ATI, XingDVD and PowerDVD 1.30.

Sunday 7th February 1999

6X DVD-ROM

• Pioneer's new 6X DVD-ROM drive
  Time: 22:42 GMT Source: AGN 3D Posted By: Byron

  Jeremy over at AGN3D has posted a review of Pioneer's new 6X DVD-ROM drive. Here is a piece from his test:

  Easily the best DVD-ROM drive I have seen yet. The drive features 6X DVD-ROM performance and 32X CD-ROM performance, with a nifty front-loading design that was truly impressing. On the performance side, the drive was the fastest in DVD and CD-ROM, beating out even the SCSI 32X Plextor in CD-ROM Performance! Ohhh did I mention? The drive comes in SCSI and ATAPI formats? You can check out the full review of the drive here.

6th February 1999

The Avengers

• The Avengers - Review
  Time: 22:09 GMT Source: ActiveDVD Posted By: Byron

  I have posted my review of The Avengers DVD. Here is a short snippet:

  Once I started to watch the movie, I was quite surprised to see how gorgeous the image quality was and not only that - I felt the directing and photography were also quite superb. The Avengers contains a mass of great colors that are clear and vivid, so on DVD they really stand out.

4th February 1999

Star Wars Special Edition

• DVD Won't Dominate Until 2001, Says Researcher
  15:46 GMT Source: PC Week

  According to a new study, users probably won't embrace Digital Video Disk drives--battered by incompatibilities and the continued price/performance strength of CD technology--until after 2001.

  Users are slow to adopt DVD drives because of incompatibilities among DVD formats and delays in drive availability, says a market research report from consulting firm Freeman Associates. [More]

   

• Star Wars Special Edition On The Way
  01:08 GMT Source: CHUD

  Great news for Star Wars fans.

  At the event known as "Studio Day" in California, the folks at WIDESCREEN Magazine spoke to various representatives from different studios about their plans for DVD release, and among news that Paramount plans to release the "Indiana Jones" Trilogy in December came the terrific news that 20th Century Fox is gearing up with Lucasfilm to release the Star Wars Trilogy: Special Editions on DVD at the same time "The Phantom Menace" debuts in theaters.

  They also say that "talks are well under way between FoxVideo and Lucasfilm on these discs, and that the set should be special, although there is, as yet, no word on what they may include." Imagine a "making of" special, audio commentary, or deleted scenes finally making their way to our hands. The one thing that's always been a thorn in DVD's side has been the lack of Spielberg/Lucas classics.

  That is about to change.

3rd February 1999

Aspect Ratio's

• Mediamatics Touts Integrated DVD Solution
  23:59 GMT Source: EE Times

  True to its commitment to system-on-a-chip technology, Mediamatics, a National Semiconductor Corp. subsidiary, recently unveiled a single-chip DVD solution that integrates all the back-end functions of a DVD player, except for the audio D/A converter and memory. [More]

   

• Phoenix Ships With XingDVD
  14:55 GMT Source: AGN3D

  Guillemot announced today that they are now shipping their Phoenix Banshee powered card with XingDVD. XingDVD is one of the better software DVD players on the market, allowing you to bypass the need for an external decoder card for your DVD needs. The addition of XingDVD makes this already low price video card an even better deal. You can read AGN3D's earlier review of the Phoenix here. ($89.99 for a 16MB Banshee card.. gotta love it)

   

• A Look At Aspect Ratio's
  14:31 GMT Source: ActiveDVD

  Added an article on Aspect Ratio's. This helps explain a little bit about widescreen, pan & scan etc for those of you who are new to this kind of thing. [More]

2nd February 1999

Encore

• Creative Labs PC-DVD Encore 5X Review - Hardwire
  15:46 GMT Source: Hardwire

  Hardwire posted a review on the Creative PC-DVD Encore 5X kit. Here is a snip:

  The decoder card is for playing DVD movies. It takes care of the hardware-hungry task of decoding MPEG 1 and 2 video, which is the format for DVD movies. Since most DVD movies are 60 frames per second, double the framerate of television programs and videos, the card has a lot of work to do, and this keeps the hardware requirements down. There is a connector like the CD-Audio connector on current CD-ROMs which hooks into the decoder card. The decoder card also has another port for one of these connectors to come from a second CD-ROM. The decoder card then connects to your sound card through its CD-Audio port. The reason for this is because the decoder card uses this channel to give you audio, bypassing your wave device and thus giving minimal distortion and maximum sound quality.

1st February 1999

Playstation 2 DVD Support

• Playstation 2 Specs Revealed
  03:39 GMT Source: 3DNews.net

  The Official Introduction of the Playstation 2 is February 16th, but an abstract of the paper being presented by Sony Computer Entertainment and Toshiba of Japan at the ISSCC conference in San Francisco has been posted on their site.

  According to the abstract, the Playstation 2 is going to have a fairly beefy CPU, an integrated MPEG2 Decoder, and a full 128-bit bus! Sega's Dreamcast might just have something to fear... this baby has some serious processing power and will be using DVD's as the game media!

  A Microprocessor with 128b CPU, 10 Floating-Point MACs, 4 Floating-Point Dividers, and MPEG2 Decoder

  K. Kutaragi, S. Okamoto, M. Suzuoki, T. Hiroi, M. Oka, A Ohba, Y. Yamamoto, M. Furuhashi, M. Tanaka, T. Yutaka, T. Okada, H. Magoshi, M. Nagamatsu¹, Y. Urakawa¹, M. Funyu¹, A. Kunimatsu¹, H. Goto¹, K. Hashimoto¹, N. Ide¹, H. Murakami¹, Y. Ohtaguro¹, A. Aono²

  Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc., Tokyo, Japan
  ¹Toshiba Corp. / ²Toshiba Microelectronics Corp., Kawasaki, Japan
  A 250MHz microprocessor consists of a CPU core with 128b multimedia extensions, 10 floating-point multiplier accumulators, four floating-point dividers, an MPEG2 decoder, a 10-channel DMA controller, and other peripherals with 128b internal buses on one die. It contains 10.5M transistors in 17x14.1mm² and dissipates 15W at 1.8V

  They also have a separate conference solely on the CPU...

  A High-Bandwidth Superscalar Microprocessor for Multimedia Applications

  M. Raam, R. Agarwal, K. Malik, H. Landman, H. Tago, T. Teruyama, T. Sakamoto, T. Yoshida1, S. Yoshioka1, Y. Fujimoto1, T. Kobayashi, T. Hiroi, M. Oka, A. Ohba, M. Suzuoki, T. Yutaka2, Y. Yamamoto

  Toshiba Corp., San Jose, CA, / Kawasaki, Japan
  Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc., Tokyo, Japan

  A 250MHz 2-way superscalar MIPS-compatible microprocessor for multimedia and networking applications with internal 8kB D-cache, 16kB I-cache, 1kx128b scratch-pad RAM tightly coupled to the pipe and 128b internal datapaths. >100 multimedia instructions are extended on a 10.9x6.3mm2 die in 0.18µm CMOS at 1.8V

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