DVD decoding. It's a balanced article. I only copy C-Cube's quotes. Software decode guys have quotes too..................
emediapro.net
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The cost-based justification commonly used for software decoding, however, is not persuasive to Chris Day, director of marketing for the PC/Codec division of C-Cube Microsystems. "We think that many consumers will prefer the guarantee of high-quality, full frame-rate playback" that hardware solutions alone can offer, Day says. Furthermore, he says, C-Cube's "latest ZiVA-PC hardware solutions make hardware DVD only incrementally more expensive than software."
How much is "incremental?" In terms of manufacturer's cost, the difference between decoding hardware and software might be as little as $10 to $15. Martin Reynolds, vice president and chief analyst for technology assessment at Dataquest, estimates that could translate into up to $100 at retail. It might not seem like much, except for the fact that margins are so low and competition so fierce. "If you look at the profits that these PC vendors make, what seems like a small amount is actually a lot," says Dale Ford, Dataquest's principal analyst for semiconductor application markets. "PC vendors work on very thin margins."
What Price Value?
While PC vendors may see software decoding as good for profit margins, companies that focus on hardware see it as the road to marginal video. Even the software-friendly acknowledge hurdles to delivering reliable quality. "Because the OS was not designed to be a real-time OS," says Quadrant's Harris, "it is quite a challenge to make a software decoder work reliably no matter what the OS is doing." Hardware decoding operates independently of the OS and CPU, and is unaffected by other demands on system resources. "But with software," Harris says, "you have to share the CPU and switch back and forth efficiently to make sure all of the decoding is done right when it needs to be. Any delays may result in dropped video or audio, or more commonly, video being decoded properly, but being displayed at not quite the right time."
If playback performance is important for consumers, it is doubly so for title developers, whose reputations are on the line when their discs are played. Mark Johnson, CTO of DVant, a DVD design and authoring company based in Novato, California, is careful to note that he has not evaluated the most recently released software decoders and that they may have improved on their forebears. But in those instances when he has tested title playback of software decoding systems, the results have often been frustrating. "I have seen software decoders choke on high-bandwidth video-8Mbps with surround audio, for example-that hardware decoders have no trouble with," he says. "In some cases, when the system starts to have trouble, it simply slows down the whole playback, running at 20 or 25fps instead of 30fps. This, of course, has a nasty effect on the audio, which also appears to be slowed down."
The question of CPU utilization is really the core of the decoding debate.
To Bill Wong, vice president of marketing for Sigma Designs, any difficulties software solutions have in playing video titles now are likely to intensify as titles combining MPEG-2 with lots of interactivity eventually reach the market. "In the real Windows environment, the CPU will have a lot of interrupt tasks that need to be processed in the background and, therefore, the DVD playback task will be interrupted. Software DVD will cause non-uniform video delivery."
"Highly interactive titles will generate 3D graphics in conjunction with DVD playback, access the Web for hybrid Web-DVD content, manage interactive input, and perform supporting tasks in the background," adds C-Cube's Day. "Clearly, if the CPU is fully utilized by DVD decoding, the interactive features will suffer."
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For certain segments, hardware remains either the preferred or the only choice. In laptops, for instance, C-Cube's Day says that "using the CPU for decode burns a lot of battery power. Our ZiVA-PC chip was co-developed with Toshiba's notebook division to allow playback of DVD's while conserving battery life. For example, it might take 12 to 15 watts of power running software-DVD on a Pentium, but only 1.5 watts using the chip." Toshiba offers DVD on its Tecra 750DVD and Tecra 780DVD models.
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Decoder card vendors aren't standing still waiting for this backlash to keep up demand for their products. A safer bet is to continue to find added uses for hardware, features that only hardware is capable of offering. "DVD is just one of the applications for MPEG-2 video," Sigma's Bill Wong says. "When the speed of the Internet becomes acceptable for streaming video, interactive video games, training titles, and HDTV, then hardware decoding will be a must-have for every PC, because hardware decoding will work at a video bit-rate up to 20Mbps and guarantee 30fps playback." Harris says Quadrant is already "pioneering new features such as satellite decoding and digital cable decoding," while Day says C-Cube will be introducing low-cost chips for consumer video encoding "later this year |
