Do dvd speeds really matter?

[spidey_joe80@hotmail.com]

Dvd's ran on those 5x so whats the point of a 16x?

[Bob The Great]

As you probably know from what you said. Any DVD player under 4X has lower image quality. Also The faster speeds allow you to have a slower computer and still enjoy DVD's!

[otheos]

bob, what are you talking about?

DVD movies play at 1x. the 6x or 16x speed ratings are data only, like a 40x cd-rom will not play any higher than 1x cd-da (audio cds that is).

DVD quality depends solely on the decoding not on DVD speed rating. If you're on soft-decoding the CPU speed matters and with lower that c300 you're gonna have poor quality of frame skipping. With hardware DVD (dedicated decoders or Video cards with DVD decoding chips like ATI's), cpu is of no importance and even a p166mmx will do fine.

As for the original question: the speed only matters in data. HAve you got any data DVD's and feel they're slow (like a 12x CDrom compared to a 40x)? then get yourself a 16x DVD. otherwise stick to what you got.

DVD ripping also depends on the speed rating but like DAE in CD-roms it does not necessarily mean that a higher rated DVD will rip faster than another.