Reddit mentions of ASUS ASUS LITE Portable USB 2.0 Slim 8X DVD/ Burner +/- Rewriter External Drive, Compatible with both Mac & Windows, Black (SDRW-08D2S-U/BLK/G/AS)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006HUMYCO?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Also available on Amazon for the same price after rebate.

Your best bet is probably to just buy an external drive.

You can get DVD-RW pretty cheap: https://www.amazon.ca/External-Stylish-SDRW-08D2S-U-BLK-AS/dp/B006HUMYCO/

External Blu-ray drives starts around $100: https://www.amazon.ca/Pioneer-Electronics-External-BDR-XD05S-Silver/dp/B00OLZCD5K/

If you already have a blu-ray drive lying around you could save a bit of money by getting a 5.25" enclosure like this but from what I can see there isn't a huge selection and if you don't already have the drive it will be expensive, heavier, and much larger than just buying one of the slim external drives above. The enclosure isn't worth it for DVD even if you have the drive since the external drives are already cheaper than it.

You can get USB DVD drives for cheap on Amazon. This one looks good:
ASUS external slim DVD-RW drive - $30 with free shipping

Many larger public libraries will allow account holders to check out an external USB-driven CD/DVD player; with it you can make a Linux OS ISO. I've done over 30 Linux OS installs on laptops & PC's, and I've never (yet) used a USB stick. I prefer the CD method; systems easily recognize it, and often better than a formatted USB stick. And, you can buy one for $18 . I bought my Asus Drive plus a pack of DVD's in 2011 and I'm still using them. But you can just buy the OS DVD's.

1. A spot of tea
   
   
2. Oh god... NSFW
   
   
3. I can only pick one? Have you seen my wishlists? NSFW
   
   
4. What kind of geek are we going for? I'll go with an IT geek. This thing
   
   
5. Mixer My mom and I are revamping her food business, and we are looking to expand. She sells cheeseballs, and I have an idea for a berry cheesecake one. Having a mixer would make testing out flavors so much easier instead of hand mixing them. Of course we hand mix the large batches for quality, but when we are just testing flavors this would be insane to have.
   
   
6. Freaking Toilet paper.

Get a little portable USB dvd burner. I use one precisely for the purposes you described above.

http://www.amazon.com/External-Stylish-SDRW-08D2S-U-BLK-AS/dp/B006HUMYCO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422579769&sr=8-1&keywords=asus+dvd+burner+usb

I just got an ASUS external DVD burner(?) off of my friend (so no manual or anything). I mostly wanted it because my computer (laptop, HP Elitebook) doesn't have a DVD drive so I can't watch the 5689439 DVD's I have at home. Anyway, I plugged it into my computer, and the first thing is installing the device driver. Fine. Then I need to restart my computer in order to finish installing. I'm like whatever I just wanna watch movies. So when my computer restarts, it takes me to the thing where you have to select which driver you want to use, either Windows 7 or this new Daimon(not sure if right name) thing. So I'm like whatever press it, get it done. I get half way through the guided install, and it tells me that it needs to wipe my entire hard drive to use it. I checked, and it's telling me this thing only takes up 37mb. Why does it need my whole drive? So I stop the install halfway through. Restart computer. Uninstall the driver (because now every time I start computer it asks me which one to use, Win7 or the new one).

It made my computer fuck up, I had to reset and wipe my drives because it kept doing disk checks after all of this and wouldn't stay on for more than 2min without blue screen. fml I just wanted to watch movies!

TLDR; Why does this device need to wipe my entire drive to use it? What happened to my computer? I already lost everything, but is there a way to use this device without using an entire drive? Why did it have to open the installer through that method? Can't I just plug this thing in and watch a friggin movie? Is there something like this that is just an external DVD player for a laptop?

Sorry for being so long, can't find anything on Google about this, everyone seems to know what they're doing here and obviously I'm.. slow..

FWIW you can get a name brand drive for about the same money. Don't need USB 3.0 for CD/DVD - the 2.0 interface is more than twice as fast as 16x DVD. I think these no-name folks that are spammed all over Amazon are kind of taking advantage of people searching only for USB 3.0 drives.

So I would probably get something like this, or this.