I saw a movie advertised as a VCD (Video CD, correct?).  My DVD player is less than a year old (new production, and I think the manual mentioned VCD's somewhere).

If I want a movie to watch, not all the Extras that come with DVD's (I have only watched the extra features on one DVD), is there much practical difference in the movies?

Thanks!!

AFARR

The difference, in a nutshell is about 2.5 times the resolution, 28x the available storage, 10x the bitrate, MPEG2 (vs MPEG1), and 3.1 more channels of audio in favor of the DVD.

Go download an MPEG video off of the internet.  That's MPEG1.  Now imagine watching a whole movie that way.

VCD's were a neat when they first came out (about '91 on the phillips CDi game console) but have since become quite obsolete. If you like a crappy picture on your DVD player, by all means...

Armitage,

Thanks for the info.  I guess the 45% savings on the VCD over the DVD is for a real reason--I was hoping it was just because there wasn't any of the extras.

Thanks!!

AFARR

DVD is high bitrate (~11mbps) MPEG2. VCD is MPEG1.

DVD resolution is 720x480. VCD is, at most, 480x480. (NTSC. PAL is x576)

DVD audio is Dolby Digital 5.1 and many other sound formats, such as DTS, SDDS, 2.1 stereo, etc. DVD can also have multilanguage audio and selectable subtitles. VCD is 2-channel MPEG layer 2.

DVD discs can hold MUCH more data than CDs. DVD can be up to 18GB, CDs are only 650-700MB.

VCDs are usually many discs in length. Rarely is a VCD movie ever on a single CD. If it is, it is probably a very short movie or very bad quality because of the amount of compression needed to fit a whole movie on a single CD. DVDs, however, are only one disc for the main feature.

The most important difference is the picture and sound quality. The difference is astounding. If you have any doubts, compare it for yourself.

Also, beware of bootlegs. There is no copy protection in the VCD format, so piracy is fairly common.

personly i like VCDs for anime its good and cheap and the quality isnt that bad.