OK, my main question is do I get anything else importantout of having a DVD-ROM drive besides the ablity to play movies through my PC?
I am planning on purchasing a PC towards the end of this summer, and I’m trying to decide what extras I need on it. I will be using the computer for college work (MIS Major), and personal uses (mainly internet surfing). I don’t intend to watch any movies through my PC, so if that is the only real benefit of the DVD drive, I’d just as soon skip it. Is there now, or will there be in the future, software that is only available on DVD? Are there any other benefits to having the DVD drive that I’m overlooking? If I decide not to get the DVD drive, will I regret it in the future?
Either buy a regular CDrom for about $50, or spend the extra on a CDRW Rom drive. I’ve only run across two programs that came with a DVD version, and they were games.
I don’t know how long you plan on keeping the computer but sometime in the near future the price of writable DVD’s will come to a reasonable range and at that point it might be nice to be able to read DVD’s that a friend burnt for ya, but other than that all software that I have seen on DVD is also available on a couple of Cd’s instead, I would skip it and get a cd-r
It’s fairly niche stuff, but if you’re into such things you can extract the FMV sequences off PS2 games. There are discs with nothing but these on eBay that sell for a decent price considering they cost damn near nothing to make. Of course making copies of PS2 FMV sequences is of dubious legality.
Beyond that, pretty much all the other functionality is movie related. OTOH, this movie related stuff includes DVD-ROM only content and software (usually screen savers and such) that are occasionally DVD extras. These are usually pretty lame though, so it’s up to you. There is also, I suppose, the overwhelmingly slim chance that DVD audio might take off, but it’s been talked about for a long time and it doesn’t seem like anything’s ever going to come of it.
OOC, how much extra will the DVD-ROM drive cost? I mean, they’re only about $50-$70 by themselves, so I don’t imagine the upgrade would cost that much…
Yes, it’s an extra $50 or so. But, you could very well find yourself in the position of people who said “What do I need a double sided floppy disk for?” about 20 years ago. IMHO, software companies will be releasing everything on DVD in a year or two, because that will be the “modern” way of doing it.
As far as software goes, encyclopedias often come on DVDs already. Might be useful in college.
it might be useful or you can skip it for now and probally buy a faster one for less if and when you actually need it. DVD’s seem very slow to catch on and I wouldn’t be shocked if DVD’s never make it mainstream (mainstream = every new computer has one).
I think the only reason you are seeing more now is that the price has fallen to a point that manufactures can include them at little cost to even low end systems.
Much of DVD’s selling appeal to publishers (last year) was its “encryption”, which has been blown.
The only thing a DVD drive is good for is watching movies on yer PC. As proof of this, go browsing at Egghead and count all the CD software they offer, and then go back through and count all the DVD software they offer. Compare.
OTOH, if you’ll be browsing encuclopedia/archive software often (the Nat Geographic set is cool), a DVD+DVD version makes life much less painful.