Can CD-ROM work as a DVD-ROM palyer??

[miska]

I have heard from a number of people that you can get some sort of program or driver that allows you to watch DVD's through your CD-ROM drive. If anyone can give me ANY help it would be much appreciated.

[BlackTruckRyder]

I don't think you can turn a cd rom into a dvd player. I've never heard of it being done.

Welcome to Sysopt

[pandaz3]

I think BTR is correct, you can however buy DVD's pretty cheap, I believe I saw COMP USA with one at $40. Add it to your computer.
OOps just saw the New Zealand address, might not be that cheap there, but the CD-ROM won't work to my knowledge. A CD holds around 600 Meg of data, and while it is a optical reader, I don't believe it uses the same technology as the DVD's which can hold 4.7 Gig of data. But I am not sure if my statements are absolutely accurate.

[danee]

Originally posted by miska
I have heard from a number of people that you can get some sort of program or driver that allows you to watch DVD's through your CD-ROM drive. If anyone can give me ANY help it would be much appreciated.

Nope.. not possible.
The 2 drives use 2 different kinds of lasers, which are both at different frequiencies due to a different substrate actually placed upon the disc.

When talking DVD's, one must consider 2 aspects...
1) Obviously the need for a DVD ROM
2) Decompression - Hardware Vs Software.
A DVD movie player for the TV, has a built in DVD devoder card, which performs the decompression. On a PC, you get your DVD ROM, and then either get a Decoder Card for the PC (additional few hundred dollars) or use a piece of software which performs the same job as the physical decoder card. Thus you can watch movies with only spending $82 dollars on the drive, if you have the right software.

Otherwise, DVD ROM's are only $82 AUS dollars including GST.

As to copying DVD's.. only possible if its a DVD burner, but...
occasionly DVD's are actually CD's using MPEG, but presented, packaged etc as a DVD.
E.g: Most, approx 87% of PS2 games are on CD, even though some packages actually say DVD. Obvioiusly these could be copied therefore in an ordinary CD Burner.

Finally.. extra info.. The different color surfaces on CD's represent different quality CD's. The different color's are the result of different substrate chemicals upon the discs.
In general...
Silver is the worst and lowest grade
Then Gold,
Then Black
Then green,
then blue.
Note though, that is in general.
For specific purposes though, this order sometimes differs, in case's like Audio vs Data vs PS.
Interesting to note that all your purchased audio CD's are silver.

[Lycia]

You can rip a DVD onto your harddrive then use a converter to burn it back onto a regular CD-R/RW as a VCD which can then be played on a regular CD-Rom using windows media player etc.

[AllGamer]

Originally posted by miska
I have heard from a number of people that you can get some sort of program or driver that allows you to watch DVD's through your CD-ROM drive. If anyone can give me ANY help it would be much appreciated.

Not possible

the other way around is a viable solution, but not what you are suggesting.

a CD Drive is soooo cheap now in days, why don't you just get a new one?

[Bigjakkstaffa]

|IF you could work out how to play DVD's on a vanilla CDROM drive, you could be onto quite a money maker indeed...

As suggested you could always try to rip DVD's onto another format such as VCD or .AVI for playing on a normal CDROM although it will take quite a bit of time and HDD space (last one i did took up about 8gb during ripping and took near enough a day to rip)... mind you it better be above board and legal of course

--Jakk

[AllGamer]

Hmm...
isn't DVD ripping = Pirating??
i thought this forum had rules about that

[Bigjakkstaffa]

It does - however is it classed as piracy if your creating a hard copy of your own DVD's in case they become scratched or damage (its happened to me before)?? Im not sure myself as i think it isnt as regards games, audio and video - so how about DVD??

Any legal boffins in the house?

--Jakk