buying a new dvd drive

**Vulcan** · March 21st, 2005, 01:02 PM

hey..

if i wanna buy a new dvd-rom drive, is there something special i should check before buying ? any special parameteres/features ?

thanks!!

**confus-ed** · March 21st, 2005, 01:13 PM

Yeah there is .. check the price of DVD writers !! (they've come down with a bump )

**Vulcan** · March 21st, 2005, 04:10 PM

that's for sure...

but realy ..a preffered company/speed/feature ??..

with dvd writers there are many features to take in to consideration..
with dvd-rom..it's just a matter of price ?...

**confus-ed** · March 21st, 2005, 05:41 PM

I'll be serious then - but this is what, a $20 or so purchase ?

.. watch out that any dive doesn't say MW (multi-word) DMA, as devices with that need to be twinned on the same channel as some other MW device or an IDE 33 speed device (UDMA mode2, whatever you want to call it) or else it'll slow any devices on the same cable (channel) to the slowest speed on that cable. (not many writers about like this now, many early ones were

, but still a surprising amount of ROMs !)

This explains about DVD speeds vs CD speeds & CAV vs CLV so you know what you are getting 'really', most are quoted as 16x dvd & 48 x cd (which are roughly equivalent) but not necessarily the same if measured & quoted differently.

& as for brand I'd say that's pretty unimportant as nearly every CD\DVD unit in the entire world are seemingly made by the same factories anyway with different badges stuck on them ! & of course is it an OEM unit or retail ? (you'll get player software 'chucked in' for pennies if you buy retail instead of $10 or so)