aights whats a hollywood+? is it a card or a program... and how much does it cost. what does it do? just make dvd's better from comp to tv?
-kx

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Life is study...

the Real Hollywood+ is a hardware DVD decoder. You can find the company's page here (http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/hollywood_plus.htm). The older versions actually had a VGA passthrough cable, but it seems as though the newer version has a card to card cable (looks like a mini-ide cable).

From what i hear, they are excellent, a worthwhile investment..

Ryan

Yeah, I have the Creative DXR3 (which looks very similar in design to the Hollywood+) and DVD's run as smooth as silk. With my lowly PII 400, it was a definate must-have!

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"The holodeck will be man's last great creation."

-Scott Adams

guitaro, a very-well known and trusted user is selling this card on our boards at:

http://www.systemlogic.net/boards/s...hp?threadid=574

It's $30 ups ground shipping, or $25 + shipping

Sounds like a good buy

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

The best thing about these is it allows you to out-put the DVD to your TV, which is much better than watching on your little 17" monitor. And, since the card does all the work for you, you can still do most everything without dropping any frames! I can play a DVD, and frag some ass on CS without any problems...well, maybe a little half-a-second skip when the video initializes...but smooth after that...NERO!

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This cable is a 26-pin connection known as a VGA-feature connection. Sometimes it's used for other purposes, but you'll find it on video cards as old at 6 years in some cases. It's basically a video overly connection, although depending on the manufacturer's design, it may have other options as well, like a TV-capture add on, or a memory expansion, for instance.

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

I'm not a big fan of the VGA pass through. Whenever I plug it in, the quality of my monitor looks degraded. I'll only use it if I want to watch dvd's on my monitor (I usually just hook it up to the tv). Is it supposed to not look as good when it's connected?

Well...it's not that it was INTENDED to look that way, but having the video signal kept close to the computer like that, and having it go through extra circuitry before it goes to the monitor...all that exposes it to signal interference/degradation. Internal-VGA pass-through is better because it's raw data being sent and not a composed signal overlay as is done in the external passthrough.

One workaround (Expensive) I've seen is to get a monitor with both DB-15 (Standard VGA) and BNC connections on it, and that can auto-switch between the two. Then get a DB-15 to BNC cable. Use your VGA cable on the DVD card, and the BNC cable on the video card. Then your monitor will autoswitch (Or let you do it manually...not much trouble) between the signals, and you'll get preserved image quality. Furthermore, BNC carries a better signal quality than DB-15 anyway...

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

I havent had any problems on my computer with pass throughs. I had a Voodoo2 and a Hollywood plus so thats 2 external passthroughs and i never saw any degrading in the monitor picture.

Mind you since i dont use my voodoo2 any more cause i got myself a Geforce DDR which is ten times better than the TNT2-m64 for playing unreal tournament.
UT seems to run sooooo nice on a voodoo compared to running it with direct 3d but i spose thats glide for you.