| Author |
Message |
JErold
| | Posted on Tuesday, June 5, 2001 - 6:31 pm: | |
I recently acquired a DVD Drive for my MICRON Trek2 laptop at an auction. There is no software and I don't have an Mpeg Decoder card for it. it is an older model 2x/20x Matsushita DVD-Rom drive. Generally speaking, do laptop DVD drives require decoder cards to run? or can I use software like WinDVD to run it? I have the Trek2's resource CD used to reinstall drivers and it refers to installing the mpeg decoder card drivers as ont of the first steps prior to installing the DVD player software that MICRON uses for their DVD drives.
THanks in advance.
Jerold |
Dave
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 6, 2001 - 2:02 pm: | |
I'm not realy sure about this, but it seems to me that you only need a decoder card if you want to be able to watch movies in real time from the DVD, but your processor isn't fast enough to decode on the fly. You can access the data on a DVD just like it was a CD-Rom without any drivers or software of any kind (beyond what is included in the OS). My guess would be that any CPU faster than about 500 MHz will play movies smoothly without the card. I use a software decoder from Cyberlink called PowerDVD on my PIII 550, and it works pretty smoothly. But on a PII 300, it gets real choppy. They recommend at least a PII 350, but I think that might be a little optimistic. You've got nothing to lose by trying a software decoder in any case... |
Jerold
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 6, 2001 - 5:23 pm: | |
Thanks Dave. I have WinDVD software at the office that I may try since I already have it. There isn't very much info that I can locate regarding DVD drives and Decoder cards. |
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