Sony's DDU220E/H 5X DVD-ROM Upgrade Kit

Emedia Professional, Dec, 1998 by Robert A. Starrett

When it comes to locked-and-loaded, ready-to-rumble PC DVD-ROM upgrade kits, until recently, only three vendors have assembled packages that truly fit the bill: Creative Labs, Hi-Val, and Diamond Multimedia. There's a new kit on the block, however, and it comes from the oldest kid in town. Sony Electronics may have showed up relatively late for the DVD dance, but it's made a dramatic entrance nonetheless, with its fast and furious DDU220E/H DVD-ROM upgrade kit, based on the industry's first 5X DVD-ROM reader. But DVD upgrading cannot thrive on speed alone. After the record-setting read speeds, the first thing that you notice about the DDU220E--or at least the first thing you should notice--is that the kit requires Windows 98 or Windows 95 OSR2 as an operating environment. It apparently will not run properly under Windows 4.00.950 because the drive uses ATAPI bus mastering, which is not supported under the original release of Windows 95. Sony clearly states this requirement on the product box. An attempt to install it on a .950 machine did in fact fail miserably, although whether the stated incompatibility was the cause in this particular instance was not clear. This reviewer's advice: Upgrade to Windows 98 if you do not have OSR2, or steel yourself for some frustrating installation struggles.

Sony's specifications for the drive included 5X CAV DVD-ROM playback, which translates to a 120ms access time and 6.75MB/sec data transfer rate. Drive specs also boast 24X CAV read speed for CD-ROM, with average access time at 100ms and a data transfer rate of 3.6MB/sec. The drive has a 512KB internal buffer and uses the Enhanced IDE (ATAPI) interface. Besides CD-ROM and DVD-ROM, the 220 also reads DVD-Video, CD-Audio, CD-I, Video CD, Photo CD, CD-R, and CD-RW discs.

Also included in the package are Sigma Designs' REALmagic DVD Hollywood III PCI MPEG-2 decoder card, driver software, an audio cable, and two DVD-ROM titles, all of which make for a well-rounded kit that should entice just about any CD-ROM veteran looking to make the jump to DVD. And with Sony's 5X read speeds, it's a long and satisfying leap.

KIT CONTENTS AND INSTALLATION

The DDU220E/H drive looks like standard Sony issue, being almost identical in appearance to Sony's CD-ROM drives and CD-R/RW drives. The front panel has a headphone jack, a volume control, a tray eject button, and an emergency eject hole. The rear of the drive has a standard 12-volt power connector, a 40-pin DE socket. master/slave and cable select jumpers, and an audio out lack. Another 2-pin jack is marked reserved, but is likely to serve as a digital out jack in the future. All of the connections and settings are clearly marked on a label on top of the drive.

The kit bundles Sigma's RealMagic PCI MPEG-2 card, a VGA cable for connecting your current VGA output to the input on the RealMagic card, an audio cable for connecting the drive to the RealMagic card or' to your sound card, an audio cable for connecting the RealMagic audio out to your sound card input, an S Video composite adapter, four mounting screws, a driver diskette, and a Hollywood applications diskette. The package also boasts two DVD-ROM titles, the DVD/Web hybrid Funk and Wagnalls' Unabridged Encyclopedia and ZORK--Grand Inquisitor, the first DVD edition of the warhorse adventure game.

Installation of the Sony drive and the Real Magic decoder card is straightforward and well-directed by the documentation. The manual supplied for the Sony drive is only a slim eight-page quickstart guide, but it includes a checklist that helps users to determine whether the system requirements are met by the machine being upgraded. The first item on the checklist stipulates Windows 95 OSR2 or Windows 98, as noted earlier. The other instructions are clear and concise and the manual includes illustrations. such as the ones that show the differences between an IDE, a floppy, and a SCSI cable. The RealMagic user's guide is more lengthy--45 pages plus index--and includes a technology overview explaining terms like MPEG-I and 2, DVD, AC-3, and others. The manual also explains the differences between the various supported file extension names, VOB (DVD-Video), MPG (MPEG-1 or 2), DAT (Video CD and Karaoke), and VBS (Video Bitstream) and ABS (Audio Bitstream).

Sony requires that the drive be installed as a secondary master, so you may need to swap some IDE devices around, depending on your system configuration. The MPEG-2 card installs in a PCI slot. You then plug your monitor into the RealMagic card and use the included cable to output your video card's signal to the back of the RealMagic card. Also provided on the card are a stereo audio out jack, an SPDIF connection, and an S Video out for connecting the device to a television. If your television does not have an S Video input, you can connect it to a standard composite input with the cable adapter supplied with the kit. In addition to these rear output jacks, there are line in and CD in connectors on the edge of the card.