CD Reader/Writer

MrWizard wrote:
A CD writer will read music CD..And picture CD...
It will Not read DVD
Any New read.write.burner, you buy at a retail electronics store is going to do all of them

If your looking at something used and ten years old..chances are it's only for CD

And just for clarity, virtually any newer DVD/Bluray player/burner will also play/burn CDs.

On edit, now that I re-read MrWizard's response, I see that he said just that. Ooops! :)

I don't know that I'd recommend a Blu-Ray burner. The burners are 3-4 times as expensive as a standard DVD burner: a cheap Blu-Ray burner is around $60 and most are around $20 higher. You can pick up a good DVD burner for less than $15, my last one was $12.

And media is hugely more expensive: around $5 for a single Blu-Ray, while you can get 100 DVD's for $20. Granted you can get more on a Blu-Ray disc, but how often do you sit down and burn 25 gig of data at a time?

Personally I'd rather have a little data on many discs than a lot of data on one disc, so I wouldn't lose it all if I lose one or two discs. But that's just me of course.

There was an obscure VCD - Video CD. Not likely to find those laying around. If you're looking to buy new, buy a Blu Ray burner. While you probably won't burn Blu Ray, it should read/write most formats. Cost to upgrade is very small.

A CD writer will read music CD..And picture CD...
It will Not read DVD
Any New read.write.burner, you buy at a retail electronics store is going to do all of them

If your looking at something used and ten years old..chances are it's only for CD

movies on cd's are called dvd's. A dvd writer can play both. A cd player can most likely not read a dvd.