Well, do the combo drive have builtin hardware DVD movie decoding that Apples DVDplayer can utilize? I'd guess not, as the Lombard didn't work, so you were using the G4s builtin.
I think you might be confusing things a bit here. The DVD-ROM/+/-R/RW drive itself doesn't have any logic that _decodes_ DVDs. That is done completely by the host computer (either with hardware assistance or totally in software).
The Lombard doesn't have the horsepower to decode DVDs in software, so there's a CardBus card (actually a combo zoomed video card, IIRC) that does the decoding in hardware. Without that card, you can't play DVDs in OS 9. I don't have any experience with OS X software DVD playback, but the CardBus card isn't supported in OS X.
Anyone have any suggestions how to determine if you're using hardware or software DVD decoding in your machine?
Sure. OS 9, Wallstreet & Lombard = hardware decoder (PC card). Pismo and newer = software. OS X = software.
There's sort of a misnomer here. The higher end laptops do software decoding, but they hand a large part of the work off to the video card. So while there's no true MPEG2 hardware decoder on the video card, the video card is still doing a lot of work and not leaving it all for the CPU.
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