When should you consider computer dvd drives?

Computer DVD drives use a DVD (the abbreviation for Digital Versatile Disk) which is the most recent style of data storage standard for computer based, audio and video technology.

A DVD is exactly the same physical size as the CDs that you are already familiar with. However DVDs are able to hold much more information than CDs which by the way are still a popular method of storage and saving.

The DVD concept was developed by a group of electronics companies, including Toshiba and Philips, and is used in exactly the same way as a CD-ROM with a PC.

PC users are adopting the use of DVDs because of the larger capacity of the DVD disk. The capacity of a DVD is around 17Gb on a double sided dual layer disk, 8Gb on a single sided dual layer disk, and 8.4Gb on a single layer CD-R, which is around 12 times greater than a standard CD-ROM.


If you have computer DVD drives, you can play DVD-Audio and DVD-Video – these are the two formats – music and film essentially - that have been developed for home electronics viewing and listening.

Even more recent advances in digital video and audio standards mean that the DVD offers even more storage. For instance, MPEG-2 video and audio compression can now be used to store full length feature films and hundreds of individual songs.

This simple process of compression allows significantly more storage than you could obtain using a standard CD-Rom or floppy disk hard drive. As an example - a single-layer, single-sided DVD has enough capacity to store more than two hours of video – perfect for the storage of a full length movie.
A DVD-ROM drive installed in a PC reads the information that is stored on a DVD or CD.

Computer DVD drives offer several advantages over CD-ROM drives including:

• A basic DVD-ROM drive offers a data transfer rate at an average rate of 1,108 kilobytes per second which can also be further increased by purchasing a faster drive. This results in much faster data transfer than a CD drive can offer.


• Flexibility: DVDs allow greater flexibility of data giving business owners who need to store tax records, client information and banking data for long periods of time another storage alternative.


• Because DVD-ROM's have a faster data transfer rate than CD-ROM and greater storage capacity, users are now able to store full length movies on a disk, using one side with data compression and decompression.

How to decide which is best for you

Once you know what you will use the computer for, it is easy to decide whether you need a DVD drive in your PC; or whether a CD drive is better; do remember however that DVD drives can read CD’s but CD-ROM drives cannot always read multi-media DVD’s … if you can only get one, get a multi-function DVD with RW capabilities.

• For basic computer use, such as word processing, surfing the web, and email, then the basic CD-ROM or CD-RW is good;


• If you need to write, record, duplicate digital music; or burn CD’s then you should look at a CD-RW 48x or higher;


• For basic computing and to be able to watch movies you would need to get a DVD-ROM drive;


• For gaming, look at getting a CD-RW Combo with a speed of 48x or higher;


• If you need to be able to do a combination of the above tasks don't consider anything less than a CD-RW Combo unit with a speed of 48x or higher;


• If you are into creating digital movies, only have the budget for one optical drive, or want multi-function capability, then get the combination DVD drive with RW at 8x or higher.

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