DVD emulator?!

[Motta]

I have heard rumours about a DVD emulator that exists and you dont need a DVD drive.
Is this true?

[oxOGradiusOxo]

I don't think that's possible because the DVD drive has a special head and laser to read DVDs which are transfered to the computer. You're standard CD-rom wouldn't be able to do this.

If you're talking about SOFTWARE decoders, then that's a different story.

[oxOGradiusOxo]

http://www.hardware-one.com/reviews.asp?aid=16&page=1

I knew I had a link to this somewhere.

[HELLCAT]

Yep there are DVD progs that let you run dvd DATA without a DVD. One is called "SMR" its a plugin for Media Player and allows you to run DIVX movies that you can pull off the net.The quality is perfect.
The down side is that you may have a 8 GIG movie on your HDD and unless you have a $5000 DVD burner you either blow it out after you watch it or use up 8GIGS worth of space.

[HELLCAT]

http://divx.ctw.cc/index_main.html

[Barney]

My brother is currently working with Mpeg 4.This would be what DVD uses.It is great.The movies he records are much smaller and are from much better quality.The normal Mpeg for video records about 1Mb a second,Mpeg 4 only about 400 Kb.My brother has also a program to copy a DVD to Mpeg 4 (you'll need a DVD drive).After that you put it on a writable CD and everyone can play it.
Note:Mpeg 4 is very heavy,you'll need a fast PC to be able to play it normally.

Ronald

[Motta]

Thank you guys, maybe I need to spend some money on a DVD drive. I have a Viper 550 video card (TNT), do you know if I need a new card too?