Decoder Card needed for me?

[spaijkull]

I am new to DVD players on the computer, and I was going to buy one online, but then I saw something that was called a Dvd Decoder card. What is that used for? I just want to be able to watch my DVD movies on my computer screen, I have no plans hooking it up to a Tv-set. Do I still need the decoder card. I have a voodoo5 5500 graphics card if that is of any importance. Thankful for any input and sorry about the simplicity of this question.... :)

Regards
Sebastian

[gyoung]

How fast is your CPU. I've heard you want a CPU of 500Mhz or higher to get acceptable performance for playing DVDs without skips or stutters.

You will also need a software DVD player. I'm not sure what is out there. I've heard of PowerDVD, but I think there are some more. If there free or not, I don't know.

[Banti]

First off there are three kinds of DVD playback

Hardware = stand-alone
Software = you only need the program and the dvd drive (need fast cpu)
Hardware-Assist = Software with added hardware to ease the decoding of the mpeg info

With hardware assist, the software used to play the dvds may or may not "require" the hardware. The hardware in the hardware assist comes in the form of a separate decoder card (which you mentioned) or as an addition to the graphics chipset on your video card (which I believe yours has).

So you do not need a decoder card, because you already have the dvd decoding needed. You may want a decoder card though. Most dvds come with Dolby 5.1, the decoder card also decodes this for you as well, otherwise you must use the 2-channel audio option.

Of course, some audio cards support 5.1 so this point may also be moot.


Banti

[spaijkull]

Thanks for the input people! I have a celeron II coppemine 600 Mhz, so I guess I'll be allright? I think I am going to go with only the DVD player since I am on a low budget right now. Also, I do not have any surround sound so stereo is fine with me :) Thanks again for your very elaborate answers!


Regards
Sebastian