From: Benjamin Koh (benkoh_at_leland.Stanford.EDU)
Date: Mon May 10 1999 - 16:04:12 EDT
> Oh, and VCD will work - I have talked to a friend who also has the 770ED
> and he has used VCDs trouble-free.
>
VCDs are MPEG-1 encoded and thus less demanding to decode. My old
486-100 could decode them, albeit in a small window and in mono. Any
100mhz+ pentium should have no trouble using software decoding even at
full screen and stereo sound. The .DAT file is actually like any other
.MPG file, just a lot bigger. You don't need XingMPEG - Windows
Activemovie can play it.
Hardware assistance gives a (slightly) better image in many cases since
the decoder can do more fancy stuff. With software you're usually
limited to interpolation, which is usually pretty good anyway - beats
any Quicktime or AVI anytime. For a firsthand look at MPEG vs AVI vs
Quicktime, visit any StarWars fan site and download all 3 versions of
the same trailer. The AVI is smooth but poor quality, the Quicktime is
jerky and pixellated, and sound is sometimes out of sync. The MPEG is
fully resizable throughout, plays smoothly, has perfect pic-sound sync
and is _sharp_. Quicktime sucks. AVI sucks. Don't even mention
RealVideo. It's fine for streaming, but a postage stamp window is not
the way to watch a movie trailer. Of course, this assumes you have a LAN
connection - the files are about 20MB each. I'm talking about playing
these off your hard drive of course - trying to stream them is sometimes
an exercise in frustration when the network bogs down.
Benjamin
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