We're looking for new writers to join us!

CES 2011: Diamond Multimedia

by: John -
More On: CES 2011
Diamond Multimedia has been around a long time and they’ve had some great products in the past. Tucked away in a suite at the Mirage hotel, I paid them a visit this year to see what they had to offer.

They aren’t just makers of graphics cards as they have a wide range of products from USB video, media players, mini speakers, and other gadgets of the sort. As you can see from the pictures, they have a good amount of products to offer to the consumer.

I talked with Marla of Diamond about the company and took a brief tour around the items they had on display. Diamond’s video cards pretty much follow the reference design, but lately they’ve been coming out with AMD cards that are overclocked right out of the gate netting good performance gains. II asked if they were thinking of doing anything else to try and differentiate themselves from the other OEMs, but for now, nothing’s planned.

For those wanting some additional displays from, say their notebook, Diamond Multimedia has a few USB displays that will output to a secondary monitor. Just plug the box into an available USB port, install some software, and you are off to go on using a second display. The BizView USB to HDMI video, for example, lets you plug into a HD TV and output 1080p video driven by the computer. If your current laptop doesn’t have HDMI or you want additional HDMI connections, this would be a nice little product for you.

Diamond’s AIW5000 continues in AMD’s line of All-in-Wonder cards but adds a little twist. AMD’s cards usually have both the tuner and gpu on one board. Diamond went and made this product give you a separate video card and a separate tuner. For those that are upgrading video cards but want to keep the tuner option, this is a nice little option. Yes, you can buy them separately, but Diamond is offering both in one nice little convenient package.

Marla also took me an update of their website. Diamond’s looking to increase the quality of their customer service so there’s an easier way to find new items that are from them now via drop down menus. Also, better web layouts with better pictures and videos will be present to help troubleshoot some issues. Diamond offers 3 year warranties on their video cards should you register them with Diamond giving you a nice long window of carefree ownership should one of their video cards fail in that time frame.

I’d like to thank Marla and Diamond for taking the time to meet with me and walk me through the suite they had at the Mirage.