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11 Posts
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5603
July 19th, 2004 23:00
Adding an external DVD drive
Hello,
I have a 4600 that I want to add an external DVD drive to. My computer does not have an internal DVD drive. A CD rom is in the top bay, and a CDRW is in the second bay. I know that in order to watch DVD's on a computer, you need a DVD decoder. My 4600 doesn't have one. Now, if I buy an external DVD (burner), will I need to get special software with it, such as Power DVD in order for it to work? Is it possible at all for this type of configuration to work even though there was no DVD drive installed in the computer?
If you have any suggestions as to what type/brand of disc drive to buy, that would be great also.
Thanks for any response,
Jeff
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ortleeb
575 Posts
0
July 20th, 2004 02:00
Jeff,
To simply watch or play DVD's, you can use Windows Media Player 9. There are also a number of 3rd party players...Intervideo WinDVD, Cyberlink PowerDVD, etc. To copy or burn DVD's, the most popular (and probably the best) software brands are Ahead's Nero 6 and Roxio's Easy Media Creator 7. There are numerous good-quality DVD burners on the market, internal and external (Plextor, Lite-On, NEC, Sony, Samsung, BenQ, etc.). Generally speaking, you'll want a burner that's dual format (i.e., it'll read and write both DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW media types) and will write to at least DVD+R media at 8X speed. Most dual format burners presently on the market meet or exceed these specs. You may also want to consider getting one that also writes to dual layer DVD media (DVD media that's capable of storing ~8.5GB of data); however, although there are a number of internal burners that have this capability, I don't know if any external burners have it yet. For additional help, you might want to check out these sites and their forums: http://www.cdrlabs.com/ , http://www.dvdr-digest.com/ , http://www.cdfreaks.com/ , http://www.videohelp.com/ and http://www.cdrinfo.com/
Regards,
Tom
Message Edited by ortleeb on 07-19-2004 11:46 PM
BklynJeff
11 Posts
0
July 21st, 2004 00:00
Thanks for the info, Ortleeb.
I once tried a friend's external DVD burner on my computer, but I got an error message that said there was no DVD decoder, which is why Media Player could not play a DVD. I found some sites where I can download a decoder (for a fee of course). Would that be a wise thing to do if I still need a decoder?
Thanks,
Jeff
Skybird
10.9K Posts
0
July 21st, 2004 00:00
Jeff,
If you buy a retail DVD-ROM drive, it will very likely come with some kind
of Decoder (WinDVD or PowerDVD). I would recommend obtaining an internal
DVD-ROM and replacing the CD-ROM. Internal devices as less troublesome and
the DVD-ROM does everything the CD-ROM does in addition to reading DVDs.
The are also relatively inexpensive at about $25-$30 or so.