Can DVD-RW drives playback DVDs?

[Cecil_Huang]

I'm looking for a DVD-RW drive (IDE or Firewire) that I can use to play back DVD movies that I rent from Blockbuster. Seems like there are a lot of cool products out there, including LaCie's d2 FireWire DVD-Rewritable Drive that supports DVD-RW/RAM. However, the following Macworld article seems to caution that these drives can't play commercial DVDs:

http://www.macworld.com/2003/05/revi...iredvdrdrives/

Any recommendations for a DVD-R/RW drive that, among its more advanced features, can actually playback a DVD?

Thanks,
Cecil

G4-450/AGP. Yamaha CRW2200E IDE CD-RW. Iomega Zip100 IDE (admittedly obselete). OS 10.2.6.

[DeltaMac]

My recommendation is: install a DVD-RW internally. (not practical or even possible for many Macs) Very simply, an external DVD (writer or player) will not playback DVD movies through our Mac, unless your system already has an internal DVD drive. That might be changing with the arrival of Panther. I have read that external DVDs may be supported.