What is the best DVD?

[SCUBA]

is there a big difference between a 16X acer dvd and a creative encore 8X dvd with DXR3 technology
and dose the 3Dfx car realy bust preformence

 

[Wizkid]

If your computer is fast enough (400 MHz+) with a decent video card (v3, tnt(2), g400, etc.) then you can use software decoding (such as PowerDVD) which IMHO looks better and then you only need to buy a DVD-ROM drive. I recommend the pioneer drives, but most likely any drive will be fine.

 

[Comp10]

The speed of your DVD drive is not going to make a difference because DVD movies are read at 1x. And no, a 3DFX card will not provide any noticable improvements with DVD playback, its simply marketing hype(although other cards from Nvidia and ATI do provide enhanced DVD playback). Also I would second Wizkid's opinion on using a good software decoder assuming you have a fast CPU.

 

[konichiwa]

Pioneer Slot Load drives are the best on the block, no question. I'd recommend the 10x or the 16x if you want more speed.

 

[PliotronX]

There's an Aopen 16X slot load (!) might pick that sucker up.. $140 for a retail one.

 

[Rankor]

Just wondering.

How good/reliable are Samsung DVD drives? They are cheaper (in price) as compared to Toshiba or Pioneer.

 

[Soccerman]

well for the DVD drive and decoder card, as long as you're DVD drive is as fast as YOU like, and you're CPU is powerful enough to do software decoding, then yea go for software decoding. I learned that the 3dfx card has some sort of limited acceleration (helps maybe 1 or 2% at the best), but if you want software decoding, don't go 3dfx. why? for some reason, the Voodoo 3 has some odd invisible lines (very hard to describe).

For software decoding, I recommend a system of these specs or higher.

-K6-2 400 CPU power or higher
-64 megs RAM - it helps a fair amount
-good soundcard, either the SBLive or an Aureal Vortex 2 card. I upgraded from an old crappy SB16 emulation card, and this fixed all my DVD playback stuttering problems
-Matrox G400, any ATi card, or any nVidia card with TNT2 power or greater
-good DVDROM, ie one that people have found to be good, speed is the only issue (like for installing games etc). doesn't effect playback, like a 50X CDROM doesn't effect playback of audio CD's.

Those are the vital components of a software DVD setup.

for a hardware setup, you barely need anything. check the specs on any hardware decoder card page..