Aug. '01 Headlines

Unfortunately, the then top-speed CPUs were not fast enough to do software decoding.  PCI graphics cards couldn't cut the mustard either, so hardware decoder boards were designed to ease the heavy resources needed for DVD playback. For a few years (into circa 1997), hardware boards were a necessary element for this very reason.  

For some, one annoying factor with hardware decoder boards were with cable connections on the back of the case-- a PC user would have to connect the monitor to the decoder board, and also have a  cable connection between another VGA port and the graphics card itself.  Boards were not cheap at the time, and added quite a bit of cost to the PC investment.

As time progressed, faster CPUs and AGP graphics cards would become standard.  The world would then see the entrance of DVD software decoding; a solution which amazingly allowed playback utilising only the CPU, graphics and audio cards. This solution also kept a free PCI slot available  (where the hardware board would sit).

Today's most modern systems are ridiculously fast.  With AMD and Intel settling after a long war for speed, 1 GHz+ CPUs are now affordable, and when coupled with any major AGP graphics card, can almost always keep CPU utilization below 50%.

With this in mind, hardware decoder boards have become virtually obsolete.  Hardware boards have fuzzy image quality, clunky connections, and add an unnecessary royalty to today's mainstream hardware.

Unless a person only cares about low CPU utilization, there really is no need to get a hardware board these days.

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Dell Abandons Linux on Desktop Models [08/01 Top Story]

Pentium 4 at 1.8 GHz; Marginal Upgrade

Windows Product Activation; Center of Controversy

DVD Decoder Boards Earn the Title of Obsolete

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