Notorius cheapskate that I am, I am finally attempting to buy a DVD-ROM drive through E-Bay. The drive price is reasonable so far, but it doesn’t include any decoding software.
I see most new drives bundled with Power DVD, but are there any other good alternatives out there? Cheap or free decoding software would be great, but if I’ve gotta buy Power DVD I will.
Thanks!
I believe the later versions of Windows Media Player play DVDs. Are going to use it on a Windows box?
Yes, I’m running Windows 2000 Pro and Media Player 9. However, Media Player states that you can only play DVDs if you also have a software decoder or hardware decoding capabilities. I’m pretty sure that my lame little 16MB Vanta card lacks this capability.
Umm… it may not work that great even with a decoder. The old TNT2 (AKA the “Vanta” card) video architecure should be fast enough for smooth playback witha good quality decoder, but a limited video memory space of 16 megs may limit the color depth and resolution you can run DVD playback at.
Astro,
I also have a 32MB TNT2 M64 card in my other PC which I might swap into this machine. Would that be adequate?
32 megs should be fine for most DVD playback scenarios. Also get the latest Nvidia TNT2 drivers frm their website.
It’s been my experience that PowerDVD is the best player software out there.
I also feel obligated to note that you can get a 16x DVD-ROM for $33 at Newegg which comes with free shipping and a full version of PowerDVD. That’s probably cheaper than an eBay purchase plus a seperate retail PowerDVD purchase.
Hauky,
My purchase price without the PowerDV software included stands at $25.50 for a 16X drive. In retrospect, I probably should have gone out and bought it retail.
As I recall, only Geforce and higher nVidia chipsets featured hardware DVD acceleration. What CPU do you have? As for the software, I’m using PowerDVD XP 5.0 Deluxe right now, it’s pretty darn good. PowerDVD XP 4.0 is also quite good, but I wouldn’t go with anything older.
Aleron,
My PC has a P4 1.6GHz processor, 512 MB memory, 20 GB HD. Not fancy, but it does okay for me.
I am running XP pro ,and no such beast.
The only windows box that I know of that has it , is win2k. This probably has something to do with the DRM that microsoft is pushing out ,cause I was real suprised to note that media player 9 did not play my DVD’s
Declan
With a CPU that fast, the videocard isn’t an issue. It should be able to do fully software decoding with around 25% CPU usage.
As far as video RAM, 2048x1536@32bit color, the highest available resolution and color depth on any videocard, only consumes 12MB of RAM. DVDs at desktop resolution definitely aren’t going to be a problem.
FYI, XP Pro/WMP 9 does have DVD playback capabilities, but like Guy Incognito said, you must also have a software or hardware decoder.
From the WMP 9 help file:
“To play DVDs, you must have a DVD-ROM drive, and a software or hardware DVD decoder installed on your computer. If you do not have a compatible DVD decoder installed, DVD-related commands, options, and controls do not appear in the Player and you cannot play DVDs. By default, Windows does not include a DVD decoder. For more information about DVD decoders, see Windows Help.”
There are some you can try at download.com :
Blaze DVD Player – Create a home theater on your PC.
DirectDVD – Turn your computer into a home theater system by playing DVD discs
I think you can get some other ones cheap at ebay.com, like powerdvd or windvd.
Oddly enough, many DVDs come with a player on the disk. I believe it is from Intermedia, and will attempt to install if no other program on your computer handles the DVD.
Zoom player is also a good choice, which can handle all of your video media needs. http://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_download.shtml
As a side note: A 20GB HD? Install XP and Word on that and you are almost out of space! How do you function!?
The software that came on several of the DVD’s was indeed Intermedia. However it appears that it was a front end gui , without a decoder codec.
Right now I am using the trial version of WinDvd , which comes with a decoder codec ,and its a really good product. But the trial period is only 14 days , so I shall have to look into purchasing it unless I can find a free proggie with the codec installed.
Declan
You’re kidding, right? I’ve got far more than that on the 20GB drive on my Windows XP PRo PC at my office with plenty of room to spare. You must be “whooshing” me, I guess.
Anyway, I’ll probably get a copy of PowerDVD 5.0 on EBay. Looks like I can get a copy for under $10 pretty easily. I’m still going to check a bit further to see if my poor little Vanta 16MB card or my TNT2 M64 32MB card has built-in decoding capabilities. I guess I can hook the drive up to each machine and see if it magically starts playing DVDs.
There’s nothing magic about it… the NVIDIA cards with DVD acceleration come with a program called NVDVD (you can download a free trial).
NVDVD will work even without an accelerator card, though, and apparently it’s a pretty good DVD player. You might want to compare it with PowerDVD before you buy anything.