My CD/DVD drive will read CD's but not DVDs, help?

I insert a CD and my laptop reads it and plays it completely fine, if i insert a DVD my laptop clicks and whirs and nothing happens. I click on the drive and it just opens the drive and tells me to insert a disk into the drive. It's a bit frustrating, and it's not an error with just burnt DVDs, i can't get films or anything like that to work.