The first thing you need to realize is that DVD players can do more than play DVD movies alone. DVD stands for Digital
Versatile Disk (and not Digital
Video Disk as some people claim). All modern DVD players can play
Audio CDs (so your DVD player can double as a CD player),
MP3 music,
MPEG3 video and
VideoCDs while most can show pictures from a digital camera. And yet others are able to play less well-known audio formats like
Super Audio CD (SACD) and
DVD Audio, and video formats like
WMV,
DivX and
XviD.
MP3 is a format used for playing music. It's very popular on the Internet because it makes music sharing very easy (due to a very smart compression method that results in small file sizes). A 3-minute
uncompressed song would take about 24 Megabytes, while the same 3 minute song
compressed as MP3 has a file size of around 3 Megabytes. This allows you to store over
200 songs on a single CD. You do loose some quality but unless you are using headphones it's hardly noticeable. Sharing music over the Internet is illegal (unless you are the author) but backing up your own music isn't. And more and more people are doing just that. Backing up their CDs as MP3s and playing those instead while preserving the original CDs.
VideoCD is considered the predecessor of the DVD although the quality isn't nearly as good and it doesn't offer the extensive features a DVD does. But they are still around.
MPEG 3 is a format for compressed movies. It's not as good in quality and compression as DivX or XviD, but since nearly every DVD player supports this format and it's supported by the Windows operating system by default, it's widely used for distributing movies over the internet.
If you want to view digital stills from your digital camera on your DVD player, you need to burn them to CD first (although DVD players with a built-in Storage Card reader have been popping up recently) and it’s convenient if your DVD player can display those too.
Then there's
DivX and
XviD. These formats are to movies what MP3 is to music. Due to the compression you can fit a single movie on an ordinary CD. Again, you will loose some quality but as it's widely used for sharing movies over the Internet, it's very popular. Naturally sharing movies of which you are not the author is illegal. But, if you want to view DivX/XviD movies on your TV screen as opposed to your computer monitor, it's nice if your DVD player has that option. Be aware though: DivX and XviD, although very similar, are
not the same formats. DivX is by far the more popular of the two on the Internet, but XviD is gaining popularity fast. So if a DVD player supports DivX, check to make sure it supports XviDs too. Sometimes you can download
firmware upgrades from the manufacturer's website. Firmware is what makes your DVD player tick, it's the software, if you will, that runs the player. And often a firmware upgrade is all it takes to make your DVD player play XviDs as well. You download the new firmware, follow the manufacturer's instructions (which usually involves burning the software to CD and "play" it on your player) and you have a better machine.
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