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Best DVD drive?

O

OmegaXero

Senior member
I'm thinking about getting a DVD drive for my comp. I run an tbird 800 OC'd to 950, 256megs of ram, GF2 MX, and an SBLive. First of all, which brand of drive do you think is the best? Second, do I need a decoder board to go with it? Or do I have enough horsepower to decode DVDs without any hardware support from a PCI card?
 
The general consensus on DVD drives is Toshiba #1 and Pioneer a close second.

About decoding the DVD movie, your computer will have no problems. However, if you wanna output movies to a TV, I would get a hardware decoder since the TV out on vid cards don't match the quality of a dedicated decoder's.
 
I can vouch for the toshiba 1402, very nice quiet drive. You should have plenty of horsepower for good DVD playback without a decoder card.
 
I have the Pioneer 16X DVD drive, and I must say, it's a decent drive, if a bit on the loud side for my tastes. The key to eliminating noise, I've found, is to build a box full of egg cartons and cotton around your computer. Egg cartons are an ideal noise-killing shape from what I've been told, and it seems to work fine for me. 🙂
 
Thanks. Toshiba sounds like they make a great drive. What about Asus and AOpen? Does anyone know if they're any good? And if I have enough horsepower to do software DVD decoding, which software decoder is the best one to use?
 
the 16x pioneer seem like the best deal right now...you can get the slot loading one for ~80. WinDVD is a pretty good software decoder prog, but I think w/ a 16x and your system specs you shouldn't see too much difference between the various players. Aopen's 16x is a rebadged Pioneer 105 i believe.
 
i've tried about 3-4 different dvd drives, and i must say the toshiba 1502 that i currently use has been the best. it hasn't given me any problems and it's super quiet. most the other 16x drives are very loud. my friend has a pioneer 16x that runs well for him too, but mine is a bit quieter.

i use the ati dvd player, but i've also used powerdvd and windvd...they all work well, and you shouldn't have any problems with your system specs.
 
I realy like my 16X Pioneer-115, it's only about $75 around here and works wonderfully. It's not too lound, but it'd definatly not quiet. If you want a quiet DVD drive the Pioneer-116 is identical, just a little quieter.
 


<< which software decoder is the best one to use? >>


Windvd is one of the best for quality in video and sound.
PowerDVD has more features than Windvd however.
 
I have an ASUS 8X drive which I really like. During movie playback the drive is absolutely silent. It's also region free and has a digital audio output. Quality and performance seen very good.

I've heard the same of Aopen drives...
 
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