Spellings Computer Services Ltd [4], the team who brought you Aemulor, the 26-bit emulator for Iyonix PC, are pleased to announce details of their next project.
"Cino"
The project itself consists of three major parts.
1. Software DVD Player
2. DVD filing system
3. Digital surround sound output
1. DVD Player
A world-first for RISC OS [5], Cino is a software DVD player for the Iyonix PC and RISC OS 5.
Using some of the advanced hardware features only present in the Iyonix PC, Cino can playback the high resolution video and digital sound found on DVD Videos within your RISC OS desktop, or "full screen" in movie-mode.
The project is still very much in the early stages, however there was some prototype code playing video from DVD running at the Guildford show.
2. DVD filing system
The project also includes DVDFS, a much enhanced CD and DVD filing system offering many advantages over CDFS:
- Ability to read DVD-ROM data discs
- Improved CD support, including the ability to read CDRW's (UDF) and "joliet" long filenames
- Planned support for DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R and DVD+RW formats
- DMA transfers over the IDE bus for drives which support it (Iyonix only)
DVDFS will initially be Iyonix only, but will eventually support older RISC OS hardware like the RiscPC and A7000.
3. Digital sound output
The Iyonix PC only offers stereo sound output, so to obtain the full benefit from Dolby Digital audio and 5.1 surround sound present on most DVD Videos, the Cino project also includes a PCI sound card and RISC OS driver to allow 5 speakers and a sub-woofer to be connected to your Iyonix PC to provide cinema-style surround sound. It is planned to add future support for outputting digital signals (S/PDIF) for connection to separate home cinema surround decoders.
Pricing and availability of all components are yet to be determined. Users will have the option of purchasing the Cino player, which will include
DVDFS, or just DVDFS without the player.
A fully supported DVD ROM drive will also be available as a bundle if required, as will the PCI sound card and RISC OS drivers.
A more detailed FAQ is now available on the Cino website at :
www.cinodvd.com [6]
Commenting on the announcement, Neil Spellings, Director and project manager states "We are very excited about bringing the ability to play this exciting format to RISC OS. The Iyonix PC has given us the hardware capable of performing all the advanced decryption and decoding required for high quality audio and video. The DVD format is now mainstream, and Cino will allow Iyonix owners access to the many hundreds of thousands of movie
releases in this format, along with all the extras only found on the DVD-Video format such as making-off documentaries, theatrical trailers and
directors' commentaries. Also, DVD data discs are slowly replacing CDR as a high volume storage medium, and Cino will allow all RISC OS users to read data stored on them"
Jack Lillingstone, Managing Director of Castle Technology, manufacturers of the Iyonix PC adds "We are very excited to see DVD capability come to the Iyonix. The fastest RISC OS desktop machine is a great platform for producing new and exciting software for RISC OS users, and Cino is a fine
example of this"
Technical notes for authors
Cino comprises of a DVDFS module, which provides the UDF filesytem, DVDATAPI which provides the low level ATAPI communication with the DVDROM drive over the ATA bus, DVDFiler: which provides the filer front end interface, and the !Cino player software iteself, which handles the DVD Video decoding and playing, region code selection, user interface etc.
Cino will be able to play DVDs from all regions, although the firmware of the DVDROM drive only allow you to change 5 times, so after that, you will be limited to a fixed region.
Only Dolby Digital (AC3) sound will be supported on release, although we plan on adding DTS sound support in the future. areas.
