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Something very important to remember when upgrading your computer with a DVD drive is that you need a good video card. Once you buy your DVD-ROM drive and get a program to play the disc, it won't mean jack if your computer has cruddy video. Contrary to what I thought, the drive itself doesn't have any hardware decoding abilities. I have a 16x drive and PowerDVD. I also have a crummy 4mb ATI Rage IIc video card. The only hardware ability the DVD program can take advantage of on my pc is MMX enhancement. So while I can watch the videos, they are jumpy (especially when the camera pans across a large scene and when there is a lot of sound information) and not as enjoyable as renting a VHS from the video store. DVD audio is also encoded with a higher sampling rate than most other sound. This does sound better, especially on surround sound systems, but takes more processing power. So if your computer has strong video and about a 450 or 500mhz processor, you should be fine with just your drive and program. But if you have a weaker computer, with weak video like me, you need to buy a strong video card, preferably one that says it gives high quality dvd playback. This shouldn't set you back more than about 50 bucks, even less if you go online. The card will put the DVD (MPEG-2) decoding onto the hardware's responsibility, which is no problem for it. It leaves the main cpu able to handle the sound requirements and other tasts. If you're buying a video card anyway, look for one with a TV-Out jack, then you can watch DVD on the tv as well. The girlfriend might be a little more eager to stay home and watch Russell Crowe fight barbarians on the big screen dvd and not care that you spent her dinner and flower money on the computer stuff. :)
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