Need help selecting a DVD Rom drive

[gm3suz]

Hi, I bought a second or third user Thinkpad T21 Model 2647-6BG made in Greenock in Scotland, it has a 60 Gb drive, 500Mb of memory, has 25x CDROM drive fitted and is running Windows XP. I want to upgrade it so that I can change the present 25 x CDROM drive to a DVDROM drive. I saw a DVD ROM drive on E-Bay UK, for a Thinkpad T21 and bought it, fitted it but when I try to play a DVD I get the following error. Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because a comptible DVD decoder is not installed in your computer.

The 'new' DVD player has a FRU part number of 27L4351 and when I looked this up it is designed for an IBM T21E ? I have spent many hours searching for a DVD player that is compatible with my Thinkpad 2647-6BG but all of the parts lists I have been able to find are woefully out of date.

Can anyone suggest a web site where I can find out what sort of drives will fit my thinkpad, I have tried the IBM web site but without much success or can someone suggest fru part numbers or drives that would suit my TP ? Eventually I would like to fit a DVD plus CD/RW drive. This was my first attempt at using E-Bay and I seem to have come a cropper. Best Regards and have a nice week-end, Dan in Scotland.

[stevec5000]

You don't need a drive, you need a DVD Player Program! Windows can't play DVD's unless you pay for the codec. PowerDVD works well but get the newest version.

[Thinkpaddict]

Correct, there should be nothing wrong with your DVD drive.
I can't recommend enough the VLC free player. This plays pretty much anything you will throw at it, and it is the most CPU-efficient media player out there. Most codecs are already built within the download, so you shouldn't need to worry about downloading anything. Plays DVDs flawlessly, VCD, SVCD, MP3, AVI, DivX, MPEG (different versions), you name it. The only thing it doesn't play (if I remember correctly) is Real media files and Quicktime files (I am assuming this is because of licensing restrictions on those proprietary formats).

I don't remember who suggested this player in the forum, but thanks!

Most importantly for you (since you have a T21 with a relatively modest CPU), is that the VLC player will be much more efficient than any other DVD player available, and you might avoid performance issues (such as picture stuttering when playing DVDs).

You can find the VLC player here: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Enjoy!