DVD Players (Re: PLUG is live!)

[Jason]

Ken Bowley wrote:
> 
> Don't let that DVD drive go unused!  Check out the Livid project over at
> www.linuxvideo.org.  The recent CVS snapshots have made great strides in
> turning Linux machines into DVD players!  My test machine at work (Celeron
> 400) can actually play DVD's in a watchable format, and a message on the
> Livid mailing list reported at a PIII 600 with 128MB of ram played the DVD
> as well under Linux as it did using WinDVD under that legacy OS. :)

Since the DVD is merely an MPEG2 file coupled to the dolby extension
of MP2 audio, it should take THAT much CPU power to play it, right?

If a lowly Celeron 400 can do it, can a K6-2 400? Sure, I dont have
128K of full speed L2, but I do have 1MB of 100MHz L2, and 64K of L1
... and the Celerons run at the abysmal 66MHz bus as well...

Side question: Why is it that none of the motherboard manufacturers
produce motherboards with L3 cache for the P2/Celeron/P3 or even
Athlon?? It seems that would help things out, even with SDRAM used
(SDRAM is still lousy at truly RANDOM access..)... Along the same
lines, why is everyone doing nothing waiting for DDR SDRAM to come
out, when it strikes me that two sticks of SDRAM with an inteligent
chipset could accomplish the same thing with a sort of "RAM striping"
... 

The only answers I can come up with are that the typical consumer
these days is only concerned with version numbers, catch phrases
determined by PR departments, and having the biggest number on the
side of his or her box. Thats sort of depressing. Seeing the average
L2 cache size actually DROP in the last 3 or 4 years is also sort of
depressing.. so much for Moores law on that one.. 

-- 
jkenner @ mindspring . com__
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