A newbie question on drives

[JoeFaheyx]

hi, im a newbie when it comes to drives...so heres my question, if i have Benq 16x dvd-rom, can i watch normal gaming cds and music cds, as well as watch dvd's? if not, please tell me what i could get for that

also, please recomend something, or what it would say on the name, if i wanted a drive that could burn cd's and dvd's. THANKS

 

[deathwalker]

A DVD drive is compatilble with both DVD and CD media..you will have no trouble using this drive to play DVD movies and also as a CD drive to install/play games and such....remember..if you want to play DVD movies you must have a player installed that installs the needed DVD decoding software(such as WinDVD or PowerDVD).

 

[farmercal]

Yes

 

[gsellis]

Most of the DVD-ROM drives are CD compatible (I do not know of any exceptions, but you never know ) You should be able to do any CD reads. There may be some music CDs that may not play, but that would be due to an attempt to add copy protection to the cd by the record company (it is not a Compact Disc according to the patent holder at that point.)

To watch DVDs, you will need to install the application that should have come with it. WinDVD is one such example. The key thing here is that it adds an MPEG-2 codec (code/decode) to your system so that it can decompress the video for display. With the codec loaded, other players, including Windows Media Player will be able to show the DVDs.

As for a burner, they are now available around $100 without software (barebones/OEM) and about $40 more as the retail package (with burner software). I personally like the Pioneer brand, but prefer Ahead's Nero as the burner software (which does not come with any Pioneer bundles.)