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Posted by
Thomas
McGuire on August 27, 2002
Manufacturer:
Sigma Designs Product:
REALmagic X-Card
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Many
years ago when the Hollywood Plus was first released it was
considered a great piece of hardware, allowing everyone to
play VCDs/DVDs & MPEG1/2 on just about any system that could
run Windows.
Without doubt, one of the most popular peripherals Sigma has
ever released however, since then, we have all moved on a
bit.
Tired of sacrificing quality vs. analogue overlay support,
and with the continued release of more impressive software
DVD decoders (and videocards supporting better MPEG
decoding); the REALmagic Xcard from Sigma Designs is their
latest attempt to show us all why a hardware decoder is
still the best choice. Or, is it?
The
X-card comes with a good variety of outputs for sound &
video. Compared to the Hollywood Plus some of the main
improvements being the addition of a Digital Video Port
which allows you to use digital overlay with compatible
Graphics cards, e.g. NVIDIA GeForce & such (Well, any
Graphics card that features an internal Digital Video input
– though a cable for this isn’t provided and is regarded
more as a future feature as not all Graphics cards support
this – thus currently isn’t enabled even), a Component Video
output (RGB/YPbPr) adapter is also included (Supporting up
to
1080i)
– it’s worth noting that this is also available on certain
revisions the Hollywood Plus though not officially supported
and requires some other workarounds in addition to just the
adapter. There’s also a SCART RGB kit available online for
the Xcard – I was sent this too, however the bracket was
missing so I’ll not be testing that out.
Other than those additions, the Xcard bundle includes a
S-Video to Composite video adapter, a Composite video cable,
2 Line-Out cables – 1 short one which is intended if you
wish to (externally) connect to your Soundcard’s Line-In via
the Xcard’s Line-Out port, the second one provides
Left/Right Phono outputs should you wish to connect directly
to your Speaker system.
The internal connectors (Line-Out, etc.) have been updated
over those on the Hollywood Plus also & should be compatible
with standard Analog/S/PDIF cables you’ll find with your
Soundcard & such.
For those of you who’ll be using the (analog) pass-through
cable to connect with your Graphics card the strength of
this cable has been significantly increased over that which
was supplied with the Hollywood Plus.
There’s also a Coaxial S/PDIF output port on the Xcard’s
bracket to provide AC-3/DTS output to a compatible receiver,
this can be used for digital output of other audio formats
also though too. The only minor niggle with this is that
there is no Optical S/PDIF output though seemingly lack of
space is the reason for this – most decoders accept both
Coaxial & Optical inputs anyway (& Coaxial to Optical
converters are always available too of course).
Much like the Hollywood Plus before it, Xcard supports
Analog overlay when using the VGA pass-through cable to
connect to your Graphics card. This is one important aspect
which has been improved upon since the Hollywood Plus as the
Xcard no longer features the analog overlay chip – which was
the cause of image degradation (Depending a bit on the
resolution & refresh rate used) with many systems. With this
chip gone I can honestly say I saw zero difference between
using analog overlay and not using it, with the Xcard. One
minor side effect of the non-existence of this chip however
is that there is no windowed playback available as there is
with the Hollywood Plus – only fullscreen. A small price to
pay for better quality overlay support though. After a few
weeks using the pass-through cable I’ve now removed it as I
only really use the TV output with the Xcard.
Xcard also uses 30-Bit output which provides improved colour
output over that available with most of today’s Graphics
cards (32-Bit colour on most Graphics cards actually means
24-Bit plus 8-Bit for transparency). As such only the Matrox
Parhelia perhaps can rival the image vibrancy available with
the Xcard thanks to its 10-Bit per channel output (Rather
than 8-Bit).
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