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I just bought myself a completely new gaming rig -- my first such rig in about seven years. Prior to that I'd been upgrading various components in my old box. But the newest games were starting to far outstrip my machine's ability to play them (Doom 3/Quake 4 were the earliest offenders). Thanks to a pleasant year-end bonus from my employer (and rather serious prodding from my partner), I got a completely new box:

• ABIT AN8-32X SLI (nForce 4) motherboard,
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ CPU,
• eVGA geForce 7900GT CO SC graphics card,
• Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card,
• 2 Western Digital WD2500KS SATA drives, 7200RPM, 250G each,
• LiteOn SHM-165P6S DVD-RAM/DVD+-RW/DVD+-R/CD-R/CD-RW drive,
• 2G (1Gx2) Crucial CT2KIT12864Z40B PC3200 RAM,
• Enermax Liberty 500W power supply (12V @ 22A for the gfx card),
• ASYS CK-1022-5 "Eiffel Tower" case, complete with chasing blue-LED rice

Sadly, the graphics card has turned out to be the biggest problem in the new rig. It seems that everyone is having trouble with the new NVidia 7900-based boards. My first card would display "exploding" geometry once it warmed up a bit. Happily, eVGA have been very good to deal with, and performed a free cross-ship RMA. The new card still exhibits a few glitches, but only when I expressly go looking for them. When actually playing games, it's been very well behaved. It's only done the exploding geometry thing once since then, during a game of Oblivion. I'll keep leaning on eVGA to perfect this card.

I have very mixed feelings about the Creative sound card. Creative has a very spotty reputation for drivers, especially when multiple CPUs are involved. However, virtually all the competing sound card vendors have gone away, or have chosen instead to go for a race to the bottom in terms of price (and, sadly, quality). So I got the Creative X-Fi. It makes the games sound pretty good (it's breathed new life into QuakeWorld), but I would have much preferred something that works with Linux. I have my eye on the upcoming Razer Barracuda sound card, though...

I'd have to say that I'm probably happiest with the case. I was very paranoid that I wouldn't have enough space for all the cruft I planned on putting in it, or that it would be very difficult to work with, but it's turned out to be just lovely. It weighs a ton, but no more than the old Antec tower it's replacing. It's very accessible, has a large interior, very well ventilated, very sturdy, has a clean appearance, and the blue LEDs don't hurt, either.

As I said, this is the first new rig I've put together in seven years (the last machine I built was a dual-Pentium III on a PC-100 motherboard). I'd appreciate commentary from a more experienced eye. Could I have selected better RAM? Better drives?

Schwab

NTSC/PAL, 1/2/4/6 hours on a disc (and can mix recording speeds), tuner/composite/s-video/digital inputs (I can jack a digital videocamera into it and spool to disc), does VCDs & audio discs, 5-event timer, CD/DVD+R/DVD-R, even does rewritables - if I want to keep/share it, it's permanent; otherwise I can erase it.

I looked at TiVo and Replay and saw a lot of commitment and a lot of inconvenience and a lot of rules and a lot of inflexibility for a lot of money.

Hmm... I believe most of the VCDs I've seen have been encoded by TMPEGenc, although I don't know what settings. It is quite possible that that is why they didn't look very good. I don't remember seeing a difference between watching them on a computer and either of my DVD players that support CD-R VCDs. Mainly the problems were noticable in the subtitles of subbed anime, but the subtitles were still readable.

It doesn't really matter now. I use a DVD player made by lite-on (LVD-2001, I think, they don't sell that model anymore, but I guess the LVD-2010 replaces it.) that, like the one the article is about, plays divx and xvid off burned CDs and DVDs, which results in much smaller and better quality video files.

I have an LVD-2001, but the LVD-2010 is it's replacement model. There was some bitching and moaning about end-user formats and stuff, so the 2010 doesn't do as much as my 2001. But it plays Xvid absolutely perfect, and there's really no reason to ever use MPEG2 for it. Divx plays ok, as long as you keep to the "standards" for it's encoding.

I also have a LVW-5001.
It's wonderful, too, even though it doesn't play mpeg4. I swapped out the original Liteon 401M optical drive, for a newer 812S drive. I also added some vent holes; it had none from the factory, since the 401M is a class-1 laser device, and put a heatsink on the main encoding/decoding chip. I also managed to get some metal shavings somewhere in the 401M, which is why I had to swap it out for a 812S. It's encoder probably isn't the best in the world, but the 1 and 2 hour formats are absolutely wonderful.

Liteon makes absolutely wonderful Xvid/Divx solutions. They aren't made for playing mp3's (they can, thought the play options are limited).

I have an LVD-2001, but the LVD-2010 is it's replacement model. There was some bitching and moaning about end-user formats and stuff, so the 2010 doesn't do as much as my 2001. But it plays Xvid absolutely perfect, and there's really no reason to ever use MPEG2 for it. Divx plays ok, as long as you keep to the "standards" for it's encoding.

I also have a LVW-5001.
It's wonderful, too, even though it doesn't play mpeg4. I swapped out the original Liteon 401M optical drive, for a newer 812S drive. I also added some vent holes; it had none from the factory, since the 401M is a class-1 laser device, and put a heatsink on the main encoding/decoding chip. I also managed to get some metal shavings somewhere in the 401M, which is why I had to swap it out for a 812S. It's encoder probably isn't the best in the world, but the 1 and 2 hour formats are absolutely wonderful.

Liteon makes absolutely wonderful Xvid/Divx solutions. They aren't made for playing mp3's (they can, thought the play options are limited).

And I've never even heard of an real web site that used VBScript.

Unfortunately, I have. Just try to download new firmware from the Lite-On website...

When I was looking into these DVD players that could handle DivX/etc. earlier this year, I noticed these networked Gateway models and looked into them.

Aparrently, they cannot actually play DivX/XviD/etc. The way they actually work is to require "streaming server software" on a Windows machine. What this "server" actually does is convert any AVI types the computer can play into mediocre-quality MPEG-1/2 streams to send to the DVD player (which is why there is a particular OS and minimum processor speed required). This will often result in lower resolutions than the original video clip, and always lower quality (due to recompression).

If you're looking for a real solution for a DivX / XviD / etc. set-top player, I suggest you look into a modded XBox (with XBMC or similar), a Lite-On LVD-2010, or the inexpensive Philips DVP642 (if you don't need networking).

--The Rizz

"Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!" --W. C. Fields

I got a Lite-On LVD-2002 for $100 and I really like it. I can play my DivX MST3K movies on it. :)
There is a LVD-2010 out now for $200, but the last word is that it is not available.

Mine has worked great, too. Though today I replaced it with a DVD player that has mpeg4 decoding. The ability to disable Macrovision and change regions with a "secret" menu is just a bonus.

Sometimes digging around on sites like Directron is a big help when you need to jam Econo but you want quality parts in your machine. I got a power supply made by Lite-On (same company as the Gold Standard of optical drives) for Compaq for use in their servers. It is conservatively rated at 300W but has been stress-tested at 380W and didn't even break a sweat. Here's the link, sorry they don't have any more of them. $20 to purchase. I paid $10 extra to test the thing as good before they pushed it out the door. There are 6 harness wires coming out of the PS...I think this was designed for a box with a RAID.