Re: "The Whole Story" CD-ROM

[Rolf Peukert <Rolf.Peukert@Theoinf.TU-Ilmenau.DE>]

Hi,

uli@zoodle.robin.de (Ulrich Grepel) wrote:
..
>This CD is actually 2 CDs. No, it is actually 2 Video-CDs. A Video-CD is
>a special sort of CD-I that contains videos in MPEG format playable on
>
>- CD-I players with MPEG-capability
>- PCs with special software/hardware

and, of course, Macintoshes with special software/hardware :-)

>
>I've listened/watched it once with a PC (Pentium-90 with software decoder)
>in our office. The sound quality was way below what I would accept, the
>picture quality wasn't too bad. Better than the audio at least. I don't
>know (but would like to know) if hardware assisted decoding provides
>one with better quality, especially sound quality.

that's very likely. MPEG sound decompression needs a lot of CPU power too,
and a Pentium 90 might not be enough to do sound and video decompression
in real time. An 80 MHz PPC 601 isn't either (i tried on a PMac 8100).
But with a pure MPEG sound player program you get quite good sound quality,
so an MPEG hardware decoder should improve that.

bye,
	Rolf