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DVD.... guh?

G

Gaidal

Member
OK, I'm buying a new computer very shortly, but I have to confess that the whole DVD-ROM thing is confusing me.

First off, which is the best? I'm looking probably at a 10-12x. I've heard Pioneer a lot of times, but then one guy told me that Pioneers suck for DVD playback, etc. and not to get one.

Second of all.. what's with decoder cards? I'm really confused by this. I've seen that some modern day video cards do DVD decoding for you. I was probably aiming for getting a CL Anhiliator 2 so does this video card do DVD decoding? And the purpose of decoding is for watching DVD movies on your computer, correct?

Thanks for your help!
 
Ok to clear things up, Pioneer makes excellent dvd drives. Check http://www.reviewclick.com if you wants to look at several reviews of it. Second if your computer is 500mhz or faster you do not need a hardware decoder unless you want to hookup to TV. WinDVD 2k is excellent with decoding dvd movies as well as several other programs.
 
I've got a Pioneer 10x Slot load DVD drive.

Some video cards do some hardware assist on the decoding of DVD's (I think thats what its called). I dont know if the CLA2 has it, but I'm pretty sure my ATI Xpert@Play 98 AGP card has it.

You shouldnt worry about getting a harware DVD decoder if your CPU is 400+ MHz.
 
Yes the decoder card is for watching DVD movies. If your computer is fast enough the decoder card probably isn't necessary. (anything faster than a Pentium 2 300 is probably fast enough as long as you not trying to do other stuff with the computer at the same time.)

They can be handy if you want to output the DVD movie to a television and your video card doesn't have tv-out.

The CL Annihilator 2 has some hardware dvd decoding features but not to the extent a seperate decoder card has. It should work fine though since I assume you wouldn't be putting that card in a slow computer.

As far as the drive Pioneer and Toshiba both have good reputations. I have 2 Toshibas that both work great.

🙂

edit, sorry for the redundancy, I type too slow !!

 
I think its kinda funny how TGCid said you need 500mhz, I said you need 400mhz and DPS said you need 300mhz to have smooth DVD playback without a hardware decoder.
 
From PowerDVD website minimum requirements

PII-266

From WinDVD website minimum requirements

300 MHz PII for Full-Frame Rate Movie Playback without Hardware-Assist



🙂
 
OK, guys, thanks. 🙂 I didn't know that if you had a fast enough processor it didn't matter! I'm getting a 950 mHz Thunderbird, so I don't think it'll be a problem. 😉
 
the extent of hardware support, is as close to nothing as a video card can since they can't decode the DVD (MPEG2) video. They ASSIST the CPU in decoding but really, they more assist in displaying the DVD than decoding the DVD than anything else.

as far as DVD goes, nothing can beat a hardware decoder, no matter how fast your CPU is.

with a 950 it would not be a problem, mostly because of the 3dnow of the AMD processors.

oh, get powerDVD (program), i have no idea that the cla2 comes bundled with.
 
another vote for the Pioneer 10xDVD (model 104S).....only thing you should know is that it's very very noisy when reading data cd's.....but very quiet when reading DVD's and audio cd's.

also, when you've gotten the drive and want to play around with it, visit

http://www.digital-digest.com/

check their DVD section, it has all you'll ever need 🙂

http://apachez.dhs.org/ also has some of the files Digial-Digest aren't allowed to post
 
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