Product: Scream 2
Company: Dimension Films
Review By: Alex Harris

A few months ago I was sitting around Byron's just after he bought his new computer. He had just received a new DVD which was Scream 2. As I was sitting there he was telling me about DVD's and how good the quality was. I had never seen a DVD movie before and thought before hand that the quality would be good, but not as good as I was about to see. I almost assumed it would be like the FMV in a video game. As Byron started up the movie I sat there and was amazed, it was almost like sitting in a cinema watching a film, except it was on a 17 inch monitor and in Byron's house.

About 2 weeks ago I bought a DVD Rom and after finding out that the hardware decoder I had wasn't having anything to do with my now almost ancient P166 MMX with 48 mbs of memory, I had to fall back onto using software decoders for my needs of watching DVD's. This is one of the first DVD's I watched when I got my DVD Rom installed, and to tell the truth I was kind of hoping that the quality and frame rate I saw over at Byron's that first time would be recreated on my PC. As you can probably imagine, I was a bit disappointed. I found that I could run the movie in 24 bit colour on my 14 inch monitor no problem, but because it didn't have the processor power behind it, a few frames would jump. I have found that with low spec machines ( it saddens me to say that about my computer, but the truth does hurt sometimes) not all the Software Decoders out there want to play your newly bought DVD at the rates you want it to, or at all. The first Software decoder I tried was PowerDVD  1.2 by Cyberlink. I could get the main page, but in not very good colour or resolution, and no sound decided to come out either. While trying to play the DVD with PowerDVD was an abysmal failure. After trying to download a couple of other types of Software decoders and failing miserably, my last hope was on XingDVD v.2.0.3. After loading it up I was amazed that I was actually getting sound and a decent picture. The picture was actually as good as I had originally hoped for. Sadly the frame rate wasn't.

The DVD has special features of 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio, Theatrical trailer and a Chapter Search. The Chapter Search is well laid out, but if you don't want to know who the killers are then do not read through the chapters because it tells you who it is. I haven't seen Scream 1 before, so it all seemed a bit confusing at first when they were in the theater in the beginning. But after that I did find that it was a good film. There were bits in it where I was truly scared, due to the sound effects and just the psychological effects added combined with the writing of Kevin Williamson. 

The extra features on this DVD could of been a lot more. The only special features is a theatrical trailer for the film, which is almost common place now. It is a shame because the Special Features is one area that could have been filled with features making this a must have for the collection.

"Scream 2" - DVD Features

• Theatrical Trailer for the film

• Chapter Search

• 5.1 Dolby Digital

Reviewers PC Setup

• Pentium 166MMX
• Windows 98
• 48 Meg SD-Ram
• Voodoo 2 - 8mb
• SoundBlaster 16 Plug and Play
• DVD-ROM - 32x
• XingDVD 2.0.1
• 14" Optiquest Monitor
• Microsoft Digital Sound System 80
• S3 Virge -DX/GX PCI (375/385)