Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yes, if your PC already has got a CD drive, replacing it with a DVD drive is no problem at all. You'll have to use a DVD drive with an IDE/PATA interface, because I doubt your PC has got SATA controllers.
Reading data from a DVD drive is no problem at all. New DVD drives are still very slow compared to old hard disks, so the actual data flow from your DVD to the rest of your PC shouldn't be a problem. DVD video playback is a different matter, because that require enough CPU power to decode ~8 Mbit/s MPEG 2 video, but this should still be doable on say a 1 GHz Celeron CPU from the beginning of the millenium.
Also, DVD drives are really cheap, you can get one for £15 if you look in the right places. Even a DVD recorder is in this price range.
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