Does my PC have a DVD player?

I'm not sure whether you have a PC or a Mac, so let me show you how to check both systems to identify exactly what hardware you have installed. Surprisingly, it can be a bit tricky to do this, even though you'd think it would be easy...

On a Microsoft Windows XP system, the best way to identify your hardware configuration is to go to START --> Accessories --> System Tools --> System Information. Within the System Information program you want to choose Components then CD-ROM (which is confusing: if you are wondering if you have a DVD player, don't give up; even DVD-ROM devices show up in this program as CD-ROMs). Here's what I see on my system that does have a DVD player:

Even here the program really seems to want to show "CDROM" but when you look at the device itself you can see that it's a Matshita DVD-R device, which means that, yes, it can play DVDs on my particular system.

On Windows Vista, we can try a different approach: select "Computer" from the Start menu (it's on the right side), and right off the bat you'll see our DVD device listed:

Even here, though, with the latest and greatest version of Windows, there's confusion. Right click to get to properties...

and you'll find that it can't decide whether it's a CD drive or a DVD drive:

Ah well, at least you know how to identify the kind of drive you have.

On Mac OS X it's similarly easy once you know where to look. Go to the Apple menu in the top left corner and choose "About This Mac":

Now choose "More Info..." from the summary page shown:

and when you're running the System Profiler application (that's what it launches) just click on "Disc Burning" and you'll see lots of info:

Okay, so that should show you how you can identify if you have a DVD capable drive on any of the three main operating systems. Hope that helps you out!

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