While most new systems come with a DVD-ROM drive, you can add one to your older machine for very little, turning it into a second DVD movie player for your home. LG Electronics' DRD-8160B proved to be an excellent choice for one such budget drive option.

Installing the DRD-8160B took little time. The system manual walked us through the basic steps of opening our system and connecting the optical drive to our IDE cable, power supply, and sound card. The motorized tray-load drive can be mounted either horizontally or vertically, depending on the layout of your system.

The front of the drive includes a headphone port and volume control, so you can listen to your DVDs and audio CDs without running the sound through your system.

With an adequate 512KB buffer, DVD movie playback remained exceptionally solid during our viewing, with no pixelization or stuttering frames that can sometimes be seen from other drives. We were even able to run other applications in the background and still retain a steady image from the DRD-8160B drive.

Installing applications from CD-ROM took little time at the drive's CD read speed of 40X. And the DRD-8160B can handle almost all types of optical media, from CD-R and CD-RW to DVD-R and DVD-RW.

The drive also features a spin-down mode for energy savings when it's not being read from, and a digital audio output connector to channel Dolby Digital 5.1 sound from your DVDs through a compatible sound card.

The LG Electronics Web site includes FAQs about installing, using, and troubleshooting the drive, as well as downloadable DOS and Windows 3.x drivers (the drive is plug-and-play in any operating system after Windows 95, including any stragglers that might still be using OS/2 Warp). The company offers a one-year peace-of-mind warranty on the drive.

While you might find a DVD-ROM drive with a more impressive software bundle, you'll be hard pressed to find one with this level of performance at a price this low.

Pro: Inexpensive, solid performance. Con: Minimal software bundle.

FOR MORE INFORMATION LG Electronics U.S.A. 1000 Sylvan Avenue Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632 201-816-2000 http://www.lgeus.com

Warranty
1 years