Your assumptions of processing power are based solely on the idea of
playing an unencoded DVD.  Even with the joke of a cryptographic scheme
it's purported to be, DVD videos still require processor time to
decode.  That's part of why hardware-based decoders are so popular with
DVD owners.

Jason wrote:
> 
> 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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