I didn’t even know it existed until I was browsing my mother board installation disk and saw that I had a demo for one on there. I installed it and it works good (at only 6 minutes at a time with the demo though) however I didnt have a DVD to play and had to use a VCD. Now… I don’t know how the quality of a VCD compaired to a DVD is but with the software it looked as good as a VHS tape but nothing like DVD. Still kind of neat.
Any opinions out there on this software??
Ummm Whammo, what’s the name of the software?
There are a lot of dvd softwares…
I know there are a lot of them now… I did a search last night.
What I have is called powerDVD.
My main question is… how does the quality stand up against a Hardware DVD player… I can only assume it’s much worse.
I have PowerDVD too. I haven’t tried it yet (Mine is the full version, optimized for my graphics card). The quality of a SoftDVD player depends on the speed of your computer. If you barely meet minimum requirements, it’s going to skip and get jumpy every once in a while so the cpu and ram and whatnot can catch up to the dvd. DVD decoder cards take the burden off the system by decoding the DVD signals itself and sending it straight to the display without using the computer’s processor.
Its being played on a 700mhz Athlon T-Bird… but only 64 meg of ram… the VCD did alright… dont know what a full DVD would do though…
What about picture quality compaired to a hardware DVD player?
The picture quality is just as good. I’ve never noticed much if any difference between the two. A 700 mhz Athlon should do just fine, though you might want to pick up some more RAM (It’s dirt cheap right now anyways).
Anyone have any suggestions for what the best software to buy might be??? Quality wise?
…Hmmm… Maybe this would have done better in GQ…
Moving this to GQ at the OP’s request.
Here are some linkety link links for you to check out. I believe that your reading device is the most important. I would make sure you have atleast a 32x reader.
http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/software/players/
http://www.starpulse.com/dvd/links4.html
http://www.windrivers.com/dvd/
http://www.wheres.com/home/dvd/
I have been using Cyberlink with my 48x player. Seems to work just fine.
I bought WinDVD for $30 and I like it. I am running a 450mhz P2 with 128mb RAM. No problems with any of the DVDs I’ve played on it so far. Except (and this has nothing to do with WinDVD/software) what the heck is PC Friendly? It is on the DVD itself, a few that I own, and it is very annoying. It asks if I want to install AOL and then pops up another screen with a bunch of worthless crap on it–I just want to watch the movie! I have to close it down and restart the DVD in WinDVD. I tried to uninstall it (PC Friendly) but it re-installs itself when I pop the DVD in again.
Reading this thread, it would seem that the OP doesn’t actually have a DVD drive on his computer, as it would have almost certainly come with DVD software.
You can’t use this software with a regular CDROM drive, but rather, you need an actual DVD-ROM drive on your computer. As such, the picture quality isn’t significantly worse than with a hardware DECODER card, but it is noticable on slower computers.
But don’t purchase this software under the impression that it will work on a CD drive. It just won’t happen.
No. You don’t understand. This is software that lets you view DVD’s WITHOUT a DVD drive. I never heard of it either… thats why the questions…
Sorry Whammo. No.
Here is a really good link for faq’s
If you scroll down to DVD and Computers it should answer your questions.
Yeah, you definitely need a DVD-ROM drive to view DVDs in your computer. The laser on a CD-ROM drive can not discern the considerably smaller pits on a DVD…it’s simply unreadable. You’d have as much luck trying to read an audio cassette with a CD-ROM drive.
Jman
You know… this was one of my questions coming into this… all I have is this free trial CD that says DVD decoder software… I loaded it in and put in a a VCD I thought would not play without a DVD player and it played it beutifully. Its taken 2 forums and hours of searching on the web finding quotes like THIS directly off the link provided by absoul…
Well if you ask ME a DVD player is “special hardware”. Oh well, hey… at least I didn’t rush out and buy the full version software for $50!
Whammo “feeling like a dope”
This is something I should have known… I guess thats why it suprised me so much. It was that goddamn VCD playing that convinced me…
A Video-CD is made on a regular CD disc, so Video-CD software can play it back on any sufficiently-powerful machine with a CD-reading drive.
Software is also available that can play back a DVD on any sufficiently-powerful computer with a DVD-reading drive. In this case, “sufficiently-powerful” means “a lot more powerful that a computer that can play back a Video-CD using software only”.
This is why many DVD drives come with additional hardware that decodes the information from the DVD and presents the video data to the computer. This is the “special hardware” referred to earlier. It allows a DVD to be played on a less-powerful computer.
The confusion arises because most DVD software will also play back Video-CDs, and all DVD drives will also play back CDs. So if you have only one drive in your PC, it may not be immediately apparent whether it can play a DVD, even if it does play a VCD.
To play back a DVD you need a DVD drive, no matter what else you have.
If you have only a CD drive, presumably you could install DVD-player software that can also play back Video-CDs, and use it only for Video-CDs.
Hmm.
I’m going to have to try that… 
Technically speaking, odds are there’s something on your computer that’ll already play VCDs. Just browse around on the VCD until you find a DAT file and double click it. Odds are Windows Media Player will play it (since it’s just MPEG video). If not, you may have to play around with file associations, but it should be no problem.
Whammo, by “special hardware”, they mean a DVD decoder board. Used to be the only way to play a DVD on your PC, but as CPUs have gotten more powerful they’ve become less and less necessary.