Quoted:
So whether a DVD player will play VCD or not should not be a determining factor?
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Well, I suppose that would depend on how big your current VCD collection is, and how important it is for you to watch it on your TV vs. your PC. [:)]
Just as the Porn industry was an early adopter of such technologies as home video (VHS and Beta), BBSs, the Internet, and VCD, they quickly adopted DVDs (and have dropped VCD for the most part), so unless you have a collection, it's a non-issue.
Well, ok, there IS another source of VCDs: pirated movies. This is a fairly small niche of high-speed Internet users, but some folks will go in and videotape movies the first few days they were released in theaters, or get their hands on a pre-release demo (like, say, for Blockbuster store owners) and copy THAT to VCD. They will then post the VCD, usually on Usenet newsgroups, and, in theory, you can download the movie and watch it. The reality is that actually getting all 8,000 parts of a 600 MB file isn't easy, and you then have to burn it to CD. Considering the abysmal quality of these pirated movies, I wouldn't bother.
-Troy