Upgrade Guide

In an industry filled with hype, nothing tops Digital Versatile Disc. A disc that looks like any CD-ROM holds gigabytes of data, letting you run ultra-high-quality motion pictures, incredibly realistic games, or data-rich programs.

Surprisingly, we're on the brink of this bliss. The latest DVD drives have largely eliminated the performance and compatibility problems of early drives. Prices of DVD upgrade kits have dropped to the $350-$500 range. And normal folks can (with patience) carry out the installation.

The path to nirvana isn't complete, though, since DVD applications are still hard to come by. Oh, you can find hundreds of DVD movies at your local Circuit City, and they work just fine in PC-based DVD drives and deliver video and sound that's stunningly better than videotapes. You also can find some impressive games. But if you want to use your PC for something other than games or movies, you'll have to be patient. Few applications are available now, but many consumer titles are expected by this holiday season.

You can get DVD drive kits from any of several sources, including Creative Labs, Diamond Multimedia, Hi-Val (www.hival.com), and Sony. A leading example is the Creative Labs PC-DVD Encore, which handles the current generation of 4.7GB discs and produces full-screen, high-resolution MPEG-2 video that you can view on your PC monitor or, for best quality, on an external TV monitor. You can also connect it to a Dolby Digital receiver for ultimate sound. The Encore reads CD-ROMs at speeds up to 20X and works with discs made by CD-Recordable drives (earlier DVD drives didn't).

DVDs demand powerful systems, with a Pentium-133 or faster CPU; Windows 95; a minimum 16MB of memory (32MB for some kits); a graphics card that displays at least 800 by 600 dots per inch with 16-bit color; a PCI slot; a Sound Blaster or compatible sound card; a 5.25-inch drive bay; and an EIDE connector.

Early DVD kits thoroughly earned their reputation for difficult installation. And installing a DVD drive remains far more complicated than setting up a CD-ROM drive. You install not just the drive, but an MPEG add-in card to decompress DVD video. You also have to deal with a tangle of cables for interconnecting the drive, MPEG card, audio card, graphics card, and (optionally) external television monitor or surround stereo system. But Plug and Play MPEG cards and improved software are making the job easier. If you want your DVD now, here's how to get it.