VisionTek XTasy Everything 5564 Personal Cinema

The VisionTek XTasy Titanium Series Line-up
Taking Graphics to the Next Level

By - Dave Altavilla
November 19, 2001

Installation of this setup couldn't be easier, even for the novice user.  However, the kit only comes with a quick install guide and no manual whatsoever.  We would have preferred a reference for use with some of the intricate recording and time shifting functions, that are available with this type of technology.

The Setup Cables - The Ins and Outs

Consol Gaming on your PC Monitor?  Sure, why not.  With a simple Composite Video input to the Personal Cinema break out box, you can pretty much run anything through the graphics subsystem of this kit.

Channel surfing anyone?  Click images for full view.

The TV Tuning application of choice in this kit, is Intervideo's WinDVR and it allows you to view DVDs and Cable TV or Broadcast TV, with ease and excellent clarity.  We especially liked the channel surfing function which allows you to get a quick view of what's on the tube.  Of course, if there is more than one program that you would like to catch, you can always time shift it to your hard drive for future viewing.

You also get the standard GeForce2MX 400 treatment with all the gizmos

These driver screen shots should be familiar to you.  Here we see some of the GF2MX 400's basic functions including Anti-Aliasing.  As you can see, the card has a 200MHz. Core clock speed and a 166MHz. SDR memory speed.

Digital Video Production Look out Spielberg

Also included in the bundle is a full version of MGI's Videowave 4 SE.  It is a great video editing utility for the novice user and it is very intuitive.

Click for full viewing

We tried our luck at recording a clip from the TV source and converted it into Windows Media File format, for easy streaming from the HotHardware server.

Click for full viewing - 2.5MB Windows Media File

For the file size and length of this video, we think the quality is fairly impressive.  This file is basically a conversion of an MPEG2 stream to Windows Media format. Videowave allowed us to take that original 15+MB MPEG2 file and convert it into something significantly more portable.  It also allowed us the ability for a little levity here!  Were these guys smooth or what?

3D Graphics performance and the rating