Standalone DVD player vs internal DVD ROM drive

[stinkfinger]

Standalone DVD vs Internal DVD ROM
Does anyone know of a link where I can get an explanation of the different things you can do with each? each ones limitations and advanteges.Heres why I'm asking:

I have had a Apex 1100W 1MB that i programmed to be macrovision free and was happy with it but the disk tray will no longer eject without doing battle with it everytime. I saw others having the same issue in nerd-out.com forums, but none of the solutions worked for me. Anyways I'm probably going to return it but the new ones (512Kb)wont play VCD, are inferior in many areas and I doubt I'll be able to find another 1 MB Apex 1100W.

I just built a new system (P4 2.26) and got the ATI AIW 7500 Radeon to do some capturing (cant wait to put this pup to work). I also want to learn to do some ripping. My computer is right next to TV so that isnt an issue. I am wondering if I would be better off getting an internal DVD ROM drive for the new system or getting another hackable standalone DVD player. I'm somewhat new and dont understand the differences with each yet. I had successfully burned SVCD , VCDs (movies, simpsones) etc, that I downloaded. They all played on my Apex 1100W but its a pain in the ass to get the disks in /out. Now I want to do my own rips and captures rather than relying on material others post.

Any veterans offer advice or point me to a link that explains differences?


Regards,

BlizzardPimp

[Nelson37]

Ok, Standalone has benefit of hardware decoder but limitation of drive speed and BIOS standards acceptance. PC has benefit of software accepting almost any video type, scalable processor but limitation of expense, and other tasks interrupting playback.

I believe the drive can be replaced with a standard DVD drive in the standalone.