New Year - New Things
Welcome to 1999! Happy New Year to you all and as it is a new year, I thought I would take a look at some of the new things we can expect to see in the coming 12 months in the area of PC's.
DVD - Digital Video Discs
Have you seen DVD yet? If you have purchased a new power PC in the last 6 months, chances are, your system already has one installed. Looking like a CD-ROM drive (and on my system, my DVD drive IS my CD-ROM as well), these are set to do to videotapes what music CD's did to tapes.
DVD disks are formatted in a different way to normal CD's and as a result, they can store between 4GB to a massive 17GB of data. You can easily store an entire movie on DVD and, with decent sound hardware, DVD movies are truly the "home cinema" experience.
I have had for quite awhile now, the latest Batman movie (Batman and Robin) on DVD. The picture quality and sound are far superior to that of a TV (remember, a PC monitor has a much higher refresh rate (around 72MHz) to that of a TV (around 50 - 55Mhz)). With 3D-surround sound (without speakers behind) the sound is awesome. I have speakers built into my monitor plus a sub woofer connected to a SoundBlaster AWE 64 Gold card and the you can feel the cinema "rumble" without deafening the neighbours!). Mind you - turn it UP and the room literally shakes!
The only slightly negative thing I have found has been a slight freeze frame when there is a lot of movement on screen. This though is probably due to the fact that I don't have true Windows 98 DVD drivers for my particular PC.
As well as movies, DVD is set to become the defacto standard for software too. There is (although I've not seen it on the shelves), a DVD version of Encarta. With the extra storage capacity of a DVD disk, more video, sound and details can be placed on a single CD.
Games too will also utilise DVD to the full. Full motion - full screen video is more than possible with DVD and I'm not talking about those awful AVI files that abound the Internet - this is the real McCoy!
Force Feedback Peripherals
Have you tried these? Force feedback devices such as joysticks and steering wheels not only allow you to control the action in a game; you can get a FEEL for what's happening too! Pull a high G turn in an aircraft and the stick will "stiffen". "Bump" into something and a judder will be felt through the joystick.
Latest Articles