Which DVD rom? Capture card?

[Engien]

Hello,

My main question is related to which dvd rom I should buy for ripping. I apologize if this is a stupid newbie question, but I have looked around a LOT and have found little info on this subject. The reason I ask is because back in the day when I used to rip lots of cds, the model of cdrom was very important as to how well your cd rips would go. Large lists were kept of many cd rom models and their ripping abilities. With dvd, I'm not finding anything of this sort. So, that leaves me with two thoughts, 1) I'm not very good at searching, or 2) The dvd rom model matters little in comparision to the way it did for cd ripping. Perhaps the technology is more standardized today and there is little noticable variance from drive to drive.

Anyway - to be quick and to the point - is there a favored dvd rom model for ripping? Which should I buy? Does it matter?

I have found some info on my second question, but most of it is dated late 2001. I'm interested in the ati radeon 8500dv. How is the capture quality? All the reviews seem pleased with it, but that was over a year ago. Is it still a good card in comparision to what's on the market now? Anything else to check out in the price range? ($200 or less). I've looked at the nvidia xtasy everything model and I don't like it very much.

Thanks for any input, and I apologize again if these are stupid newbie questions.

[DJ Bobo]

As for the DVD drive, I would recommend an LG drive.
I own the 12X model, and I'm very satisfied with it:
1) you can make it region free (most important thing!)
2) you can use CD Throttle on it to change its speed as you want. So you may lower the speed to 2X or 6X if you wanna watch DVD or CD, and to 12X if you want to rip. With 12X, it reaches about 7X in SmartRipper.
3) has very good error correction. Even with scratched CDs , it doesn't have any problems. Where other drives stop copying or freeze your PC, this LG drive just keeps going on, correcting all errors and completing the copy process!