Serious Question

[sapiens74 0]

What is the point of having a DVD player in your PC?

 

ANd on top of that to have a DVD player at anything above 2x?

 

 

What's the ****ing point? No one is releasing any software or games on the format.

[Dirty Harry 0]

Not that I have one, but the one who dies with the most toys wins!

 

H.

[Davros 0]

The point is that a DVD burner also reads DVDs.

[jtourville 0]

Quote:

What is the point of having a DVD player in your PC?

ANd on top of that to have a DVD player at anything above 2x?


What's the ****ing point? No one is releasing any software or games on the format.

Because some people don't have a DVD player or big screen TV. While I was in college, I had a 13" TV with a mono speaker, and my computer had a 17" monitor with 5.1 speakers. Needless to say, watching movies on my computer was a lot better experience than on my TV.

And if your DVD drive is your main computer CD drive, you definitely don't want a 2x drive. I think a 2x DVD drive reads CDs at something like 8x. Modern drives are 16x DVD, 40x CD. Personally, I don't see any reason to buy a normal CD-ROM drive anymore, unless you just want as cheap a drive as possible, because DVD drives are very reasonably priced.

[clutch 1]

I get my MSDN Universal Subscription on DVD, and the faster the drive the faster the stuff loads/installs.

[JP- 0]

No-one released games on CDs when CD drive were new, but now look Will be same with DVD drives, thing is though that i must have got my 16x DVD drive almost a year ago now and i still cant find any faster ones to buy. Maybe they realise there is no point atm

[Alien 1]

There's also the fact that if you have your PC in the same room as your TV & your PC is upto spec for playing DVDs on your TV, with the exception of actually having a DVD drive, then it's cheaper to buy a DVD drive than it is to buy a standalone player.

[uboofer 0]

DVD player have the ability to defeat some copy protection. Developers sometimes put a "ghost track" on the disk to stop copying and regular CD roms get confused and stop reading the original copy. DVD players can determine if the CD has a ghost track in it and ignore it. If you have ever been copying a disk and the CD rom suddenly stops reading chances are it may have a ghost track.

[sapiens74 0]

I can understand the Not enough room for a big tv theory, and MSDN, but thats a very small percentage of owners, whaT about the rest of us who have to buy games on 5 ****ing cd's instead of one DVD?

 

And CD's were the dominant media once CD burners came out, unlike DVD, who still I have yet to find more then 5 games that come on the format.

 

A waste of money IMHO.

[Champion_R 0]

DVD drives rip digital audio far better than regular CD-ROM drives. You also have the ability to copy DVD movies to divx format too.

 

But the main thing is that I find that DVD drives read CDs better than CD drives.

[AndyFair 0]

I can understand what Sapiens is trying to say - CD-ROM adoption went hand-in-hand with the rise of CD-based games.

But the same isn't true for DVD-based games. DVD drives have been around for, what 3 or 4 years now? But the number of DVD games is only a handful.

 

I think the reason for this is twofold:

Most games still only come on 2 CDs max There are only a handful of games that come on enough CDs to justify putting them onto DVD (Baldurs Gate & FlightSim 2002 spring to mind). Even Morrowind only comes on 2 CDs, and only one of those is required for the game - the other is the Level Designer app!

Crap acting When CD-based games first came out, most of them were normal games with lots of extra speech and badly acted video sequences tacked on as an afterthought. Thankfully, I think most game companies (those that are still around) have learnt from that and don't want to make the same mistake with DVDs.

 

At the moment, there is no "killer app" for DVDs (apart from movies and magazine coverdisks) - but with the launch of more bloatware (like Visual Studio .Net) and bigger games (how many disks will Neverwinter Nights come on?!) we will see more DVD media in the software stores.

 

You have to remember that the jump from floppy to CD capacity was massive (500 times the capacity) and at the time was a necessity (who remembers the 20-odd floppy disks that made up Office95 Pro?). The jump from CD to DVD is not as great (7 times?), and people will, at the moment, accept apps on 7 CDs...but probably not for much longer!

 

We'll get there, and DVDs will become the main media format, it's just that the drive isn't there yet (forgive the pun ;( )

 

 

Just my stream of consciousness stuff...

AndyF

[clutch 1]

Are you familiar with why VS.NET takes up multiple CDs? It's because the MSDN Online index is now incorporated with the program; that is the only way to get it. There is no longer a separation of the VS suite and the online KB. Now, since the application handles multiple languages, includes the .NET framework, and includes the online KB I think you will find there is sufficient reason for its size. So, I wouldn't call it "bloatware" at all.

 

I would imagine another main reason for the slow movement toward DVD-based media is the installed base. When there were applications (games, programs, p0rn [yes, you bet that drives technology too], etc) that demanded larger media and much improved sound, it went to CD. That was the only media at the time that could do what was needed for these applications, and even when the drives were expensive and slow by today's standards, they were a lot faster and had *way* more capacity than competing domestic media at the time. Now, we have CD-ROM drives on far more computers out there than DVD units, and if you publish an application to DVD only you are effectively killing off most of your demographic. And if you want to cater to both CD and DVD-ROM users, you run into the increased expense of maintaining both publishing sets (hence MS providing price breaks and rebate to MSDN subscribers that go to DVD since there is less media to produce and distribute if they can get their subscribers to make the switch).

 

While that's a good reason for software companies to hold off, hardware companies have an easier time moving forward with DVD-ROMs; the units are backward compatible. Why produce both types of drives when you can make DVD-ROM units for the same price as CD-ROM drives? During my last order of PCs, I would have had to pay *more* to get a regular CD-ROM drive than to get a either a CD-R/W or a DVD-ROM since they had more of those units on hand than the plain old CD-ROM drives. It's just better business sense to mass produce something that offers more features than to maintain two different production lines when one will do what you need. Right now, we are just waiting for either the installed base to catch up (between the 8 workstations that I use regularly, I have 2 DVD-ROMs myself, so it's gonna be a while for me ) or as mentioned earlier wait for a killer app to come in and push the need for the units over the edge. But in either case, there's going to be some waiting involved.

 

[sapiens74 0]

CLutch we are still getting the damn things on CD's. Alot of them at that.

 

I did see a cool thing tho while I was downtown Seattle.

 

Pioneer had a booth with thier Plasma Screens and a realtime DVD/R/RW

recorder, just like a VCR.

 

Was pretty cool.

 

THe Video industry tho has pushed DVD's too the point that most stores have more of them then they do video tapes.

But the computer industry who got the DVD thing going, has been pretty stagnent as of late. You know they Could use the extra space to give us better Cutscenes, at least at higher REZ.

[whoisurdaddy 0]

Ever wonder that if the games are on DVD discs then I think it might rasie the price of the games. Since DVD discs are way more expensive than CDs.

[Admiral LSD 0]

Quote:

What is the point of having a DVD player in your PC?

ANd on top of that to have a DVD player at anything above 2x?


What's the ****ing point? No one is releasing any software or games on the format.

I asked myself that same question when trying to decide what to replace my CD-ROM drive with now that it's kicked the bucket (one of the parts in the spindle assembly has become fully magnetised causig it to not eject properly). I'm going to replace it with a CD burner

[sapiens74 0]

THats why IM thinking the same. Getting a combo drive or a really fast CDRW. DVD is a waste in my system

[AndyFair 0]

Quote:

Are you familiar with why VS.NET takes up multiple CDs?...[cut]...So, I wouldn't call it "bloatware" at all.

No you're right, I've just got the trial version of VS.net, and I am mightily impressed. The only reason I used it as an an example of bloatware is that it is the only app I can think of that comes on so many CD's or one DVD. However, knowing Microsoft, it is only a matter of time before Office starts being offered on CD, and that really is bloatware. That's the point I was trying to make, chose the wrong example I guess

Quote:

I would imagine another main reason for the slow movement toward DVD-based media is the installed base. When there were applications (games, programs, p0rn [yes, you bet that drives technology too], etc) that demanded larger media and much improved sound, it went to CD. That was the only media at the time that could do what was needed for these applications, and even when the drives were expensive and slow by today's standards, they were a lot faster and had *way* more capacity than competing domestic media at the time. Now, we have CD-ROM drives on far more computers out there than DVD units, and if you publish an application to DVD only you are effectively killing off most of your demographic. And if you want to cater to both CD and DVD-ROM users, you run into the increased expense of maintaining both publishing sets (hence MS providing price breaks and rebate to MSDN subscribers that go to DVD since there is less media to produce and distribute if they can get their subscribers to make the switch).

Not sure I agree fully about the installed base. In the UK, at least, most home PCs are sold with a DVD, or one of those CD-RW/DVD combos. So I don't think games companies would be on to a loser. Office apps, however, would be, because most office PCs come with CD drives (or in my office, not at all. When I buy PCs for work, only NT admins get a CD drive )
And as for p0rn companies driving technology, it's true - they currently make up something like 80-90% of e-commerce traffic on the Internet! 8)

Quote:

While that's a good reason for software companies to hold off, hardware companies have an easier time moving forward with DVD-ROMs; the units are backward compatible. Why produce both types of drives when you can make DVD-ROM units for the same price as CD-ROM drives? During my last order of PCs, I would have had to pay *more* to get a regular CD-ROM drive than to get a either a CD-R/W or a DVD-ROM since they had more of those units on hand than the plain old CD-ROM drives. It's just better business sense to mass produce something that offers more features than to maintain two different production lines when one will do what you need. Right now, we are just waiting for either the installed base to catch up (between the 8 workstations that I use regularly, I have 2 DVD-ROMs myself, so it's gonna be a while for me ) or as mentioned earlier wait for a killer app to come in and push the need for the units over the edge. But in either case, there's going to be some waiting involved.

Bottom line: it's a Catch 22 situation: until the user base catches up, no software company will be their business on DVDs; but until software companies start producing DVDs, the incentive isn't there to buy them...

AndyF

[clutch 1]

Correct, most of the systems that are sold out here come with DVD drives. However, there are many, many more systems still in service that have CD-ROM drives in them; that is the installed base that I am referring to.

 

Quote:

However, knowing Microsoft, it is only a matter of time before Office starts being offered on CD, and that really is bloatware.

 

Man, I hate to break this to you but Office has been offered on CD in the US for quite a while now. Shipments must move quite slowly in your neck of the woods...

 

[AndyFair 0]

Quote:

Man, I hate to break this to you but Office has been offered on CD in the US for quite a while now. Shipments must move quite slowly in your neck of the woods...

And you're going to say next that you're all using that new fangled Windows95 operating system...and what about those mouse things? Can't see those catching on...
DOS rules!

AndyF

[clutch 1]

DOS is Dead! We sent the news to you via carrier pigeon (the premier instant messenger service), and it should get to you in a week or so...

 

[TechnoNerd 0]

Reason I love dvd player for my computer

 

1) Connect my computer to Tv and watch DVD's

 

2) There a game with many cd, but with dvd, it has only one dvd

etc. other box in Baldur's Gate 2 has 4 cd, but in other box has only one dvd. like disk to cd.