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Like this? I have one, works ok... Not extatic about it, but does the job. Was damn cheap too. I have the smaller model, the bigger model promises 10 hours. My initial review. Haven't played much with it. It lies by my bed for the occasional sysadmin tasks when I get alerts.

A firewire device for musicians. What a great idea. That's Apple for you, always on the forefront of new technology.

This little bugger, the Hercules Game Theater XP was first released to Market about 3 years ago and has enjoyed relative obscurity compared to Creative's offerings, though it was far superior to the SBLive! Platinum (Creative's flagship at the time). After it was released, I waited for some reviews to come in and they were quite good, so I bought one. Then I bought another. Then my father-in-law bought one.

It is PCI based, with nost of your I/O's on the breakout box, including 4 USB ports, gold-plated 1/4" headphone with control pot, gold-plated 1/4" line-in with control pot, gold-plated RCA line-in, game port, gold-plated 1/8" main and surround line-out, 6 gold-plated RCA line-outs (main left/right, surround left/right, center, subwoofer), Digital S/PDIF Input & Output (Coaxial & Optical), MIDI-In/MIDI-Out DIN connectors (MPU-401 compatible).

I've never had a problem with it. Drivers are great. 7.1 Audio is nice! It's based on the Crystal CS4624 DSP, a fairly capable chip.

When released, it sold for about $150, compared to the SBLive! Platinum, which came in at over $200. I don't see it at CompUSA and BestBuy today, but I'm sure you can find one.

I think the other guys maybe right about Number Nine and STB, but Hercules is still around, they just stopped producing chipsets in house.

For instance, I have a Hercules card with a nVidia GF2 Pro (which is showing its age *grumble*). However, I think they got in a tiff with nVidia over something awhile back and now they produce ATI based cards exclusively.

They have also been producing some interesting sound solutions here lately...

About a year and a half after I got my Hercules GF2 GTS, the fan on it started spinning slow and making noise. Went to Hurcules's webpage, filled out a form (needs the serial number from the card), and 2 weeks later, I had a new HSF at my door, no cost to me. Link is here.

Hercules still exists. In fact, I bought my GF3Ti500 from them. Whatchu talkin' 'bout Willis?

There are a couple of differences, the main one being the lack of the cool RF remote.

Paul.

Sega didn't design the graphics in the Dreamcast. Powervrused their pvr series 2 chip in there with tile based renmdering engine, currently I have a pvr series 3 chip in my computer right now that rocks. I'm waitng for the mysterious kyro 3 to come out soon and whoop some ass for a hundred and change. Anyone that pays upwards of 200 dollars plus for a graphic cars is insane.

Hate to break it to you, but this is hardly a new concept.
You want an unbelievable amount of connectors? Hercules did it about a year ago. It has 2 line in connectors + microphone, 6.1 channel audio supported, external rack, optical in and out, coaxial in and out, midi in and out, and to top it all off its external box is a 4 port USB hub.
Here you go

In a way, they kind of have. Remember, this is a 15" flat-panel display, it has nearly the effective display area of a 17" CRT monitor.

Truly. I just built a new PC, after selling my old one and moving to the other side of the world, and this time went for a flat-panel. A Hercules Prophetview, to be precise, which is a 15"-er. Measured up against the 17" CRT on a friend's machine, this is the tiniest bit smaller.. maybe it's equivalent to a 16.5" CRT.

This is easily the coolest thing I've ever bought for a PC, it's absolutely beautiful, takes up so little space, it's ultra crisp and flicker free at 1024x768, blurs up lower resolutions attractively rather than just doubling up on some pixels like the shitty display on my old laptop, and has no ghosting at all even roaring around in Serious Sam or Wolfenstein. I'm delighted, and if the screen in the new iMac is similar quality, I can guarantee you that anyone out there in consumer-land will be equally delighted.

Worse than nVidia's drivers? That's going to be pretty tough. Read any number of posts here, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Worst offender I've seen recently is Hercules/Guillemot. Give it a try with Mozilla, Konqueror, Lynx or w3m and cringe! Even Netscape 4.77 can't seem to grok its menu structure.

Someone write that webmaster a nasty. :P

Here's Intervideo's WinDVD compatibility list (shows a lot of cards support 5.1 and S/PDIF). I would assume that other cards would work fine with WinDVD if they support it, but I skipped over all the ones in the list that don't have those checked.

Here's Neoseeker's audio card reviews. Links to other review sites as well. PC AV Tech seems good as well.

And the list of ones I'm still looking at:

• Midiman's Delta Series. These are professional cards, but the bottom ones might be affordable (the Audiophile 2496 in particular). Good Linux support. I'm considering going all the way and getting the Delta 66 (quite expensive...one place has it at $350) to be sure I have something that works. The audio quality would be much, much better than I need for sure. One thing I'll certainly check out more before spending all that money: I don't know if the Windows drivers support consumer game APIs like EAX and such. None of the professional cards mention this and I'm not sure if it's a "of course, even the consumer cards do that, why bother to mention it" or a "these are for recording, not games" sort of deal.
• Philips Acoustic Edge 705 and 706. These looked pretty good in a review site. I haven't checked Linux support.
• Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. One review site said they had crappy drivers as well (stability problems under 95/98), so I'm not too likely to get this one. It was an old review, though. I hadn't realized Turtle Beach was in danger of going out of business.
• Hercules Game Theater XP. This wasn't on my list before; thanks for the tip.

Hercules' assets and brand have been bought in by French PC devices maker Guillemot, who recently "reactivated" the brand.

Well, since the Hercules press release says the Prophet III will be released in March, and since that's in two days, I don't think the Mac will beat it by many many weeks unless it's released in about two weeks ago.