PC

Packard Bell iXtreme 9700

If the idea of burning your home videos onto DVDs gets your heart revving, this could be the kit for you.

Price: £1499

Manufacturer: Packard Bell

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Verdict

The iXtreme 9700 is highly specified for movie editing and DVD writing. But if your interests are broader, there are better PCs out there.

Frank White, What PC? 07 Jan 2002

DVD recording is a bit of a nightmare. In the past we have tested the Packard Bell Video Dre@m Machine and now, just a few months on, we see that it has been barged aside by a new and more powerful model.

The iXtreme 9700 boasts a top-end 2GHz Pentium 4 processor - quite a leap from the 1GHz Pentium III processor that the Dre@m Machine housed. Packard Bell has also done well to double the memory to 256Mb, but then this is a system designed with video editing in mind. Indeed, the performance this specification provides will help you crunch through the many tasks and renderings needed to edit raw footage into something worth watching.

Of course, you have to get that footage onto the PC in the first place and this is where many PCs falter. Not the iXtreme, though: it has a FireWire card onboard, which allows you to transfer fast and direct from your camcorder. This card has three FireWire ports; two at the back of the PC and one perfectly placed at the front. The 60Gb hard disk will store hours of work, giving plenty of room for manoeuvre.

Of course, DVD-RW (rewriter) technology is still in its infancy - and with this comes uncertainty. The blank discs themselves can be elusive, expensive and even incompatible with some DVDRom drives and DVD players. If you have doubts about compatibility, get your local dealer to demonstrate the DVD-RW capability of its machines by recording a quick movie and then playing it on the model of DVD player you own. Our hunch is that in most cases you will be fine.

The excellent software bundle should ensure that your pottering will be hassle-free from the off. MGI's helpful and feature-packed VideoWave 4 will help with the editing while MyDVD provides the nous to record the finished product onto blank DVD-RWs. Lots of other software is supplied, including an abundance of educational titles.

This is one of the few instances where the machine succeeds in offering what its 'total DVD-R' remit demands. In most other respects it is an unspectacular PC. As a home entertainment choice it falls short due to a deeply ordinary 17in curved CRT monitor. Its small viewing area, pronounced curve and uninspiring screen quality will discourage you from watching DVDs and playing games.

As will the distinctly feeble speakers. This subwoofer with two 'tweeters' that clip onto the side of the monitor offer nothing like the power we expect from a PC costing well in excess of a grand. That said, they represent something of a style coup for Packard Bell as they replace the downright ugly box-like speakers which once adorned its PCs and hung from the side of the monitor like two jug ears.

The 64Mb GeForce2 MX 400 graphics card is nowhere near the best on the market but it can make a fine job of keeping up with most games. This makes the poor performance of the monitor and speakers doubly disappointing. In no way could the 9700 be described as an all-round machine - rather, it's designed for a specific purpose. Although we said earlier that the performance of the machine was impressive, its results in our performance tests show that it can't keep up with the best Pentium 4 machines we've seen.

However, if you are looking for a dedicated movie editing, DVD recording PC with plenty of punch and ready to go out of the box for as much as £500 cheaper than the going rate, then look no further.

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