Club3D OmniChrome S4 Retail Bundle and Presentation
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The box detailing makes it clear that you're buying an OmniChrome S4 and that there's a free copy of Colin McRae 4 in the box. The box details a 128MB variant, however the supplied reference board (think of the entire package as an S3 reference board partnering final Club3D presentation and bundle) is 256MB. You'll get a 128MB board in such a box, fear not.
In a multimedia product such as OmniChrome, arguably the most important hardware parts, even over the card itself, are your connectivity options and the remote control. Cables first.
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You can see the composite-to-S-Video cable and the DVI adaptor in their respective bags, component connection cables for both S-Video ports (both input and output) for connecting RGB video sources, and finally the audio connector for hooking up to your soundcard's line-input, allowing your system to capture audio from the OmniChrome. You connect up a HDTV output source to the DVI port or component output hung off the S-Video port, or a regular TV to the S-Video output.
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The remote functions almost identically to ATI's RemoteWonder or the similar remote that NVIDIA ship with their Personal Cinema boards. An infra-red (to ATI or NVIDIA's radio) device, the OmniChrome remote doesn't seem to function as a mouse in Windows. I couldn't make the pointer move for love nor money, however much it seemed like it should. For controlling the PVR software however, it worked fine. It's a light remote, not shipped with batteries (although I'm assured retail models will be) and the buttons and D-pad are tactile rubber with good feedback that you've made a successful keypress. All the major functions you'll undertake have buttons at the top of the remote. I'd prefer them somewhere under the D-pad (which could be moved near the top of the remote in future models, in this reviewer's opinion) for easier pressing.
It's one of the better, cheap remotes you see shipped with these classes of device. While I've not experienced a RemoteWonder II yet, the OmniChrome remote is lightyears ahead of RemoteWonder-I/NVIDIA's Personal Cinema remote in terms of usability with those clunky, fat, untactile remotes best consigned to the bin.
Software in the box was confined to the copy of Colin McRae Rally 4 and a basic (and incorrect) driver CD. S3 supplied some CDs to get the software up and running and we're assured that properly printed versions of those will ship in full retail examples.
