Lasers and motors used in the computer DVD roms are supposed to be a lot more advanced and powerful than the ordinary cheap DVD players... But its not the case in real, why?....

Its important for me coz my works on the pc highly depends on my DVD-RW drive as I use to read-write and copy a lot of CD's and DVD's daily.... If any of u have got good results with expensive DVD drives, please suggest the brand....

they can be alll very different. My imac is very fussy about CD and DVD's but my laptop will play anything

Dvd drives in computers are more criticle than dvd players. But be aware that playing damaged discs can shorten the life of any laser based player because it has to work that much harder to read the disc. Thats a fact rather than an opinion!

This situation is simular to a record player in that the needle on an expensive deck would jump with a damaged record. While a ordinary domestic record player would play the damaged record without a problem. Thats cos the pro deck has the capacity to play more detail on the track which could be the damaged portion the cheap player would miss. The same can be said with different qualities of laser.

You get what you pay for , so avoid that 30 USD Hewlett Packard dvd burner at Wal-Mart .

Yeah sure, buy an expensive player that cant play damaged discs or buy a cheap player that does lol. Usually with audio visual or computer equipment you get exactly what you pay for. You shouldnt be using damaged discs anyway.

@banbury.... Who would mind using a cheap drive which can play scratched disks, and why should one bother buying an expensive one which cant handle damaged disks?..... Overall a good drive is supposed to be able to handle partially damaged disks.... I agree with plzgvhug, coz I've seen many different drives some can handle bad disks and some cant.....

Why should you bother buying expensive players when cheap players play damaged discs, yes that was exactly my point.

And yes, in electrical equipments you get what you pay for..... But its only the disc drives where they confuse people.... I've read somewhere on the net that some expensive DVD drives uses a pit reader filtering technique which helps to read an almost unreadable disk.... And some uses bad track skipping technology.... So want to confirm which brand is reliable in terms of reading disks.... One of my friends has an almost new samsung DVD drive which cannot read even new discs.....