Audio support for digital audio and MIDI devices. Device drivers are included that can play disc-resident digital audio and MIDI files in the background while an application is running. This includes support for Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA).Windows with Multimedia provides the underlying software support for multimedia. It does this by providing several significant enhancements to the standard Windows 3.0 platform:
Audio support for digital audio and MIDI devices. Device drivers are included that can play disc-resident digital audio and MIDI files in the background while an application is running. This includes support for Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA).
Standard MIDI instrument patch management services allowing MIDI files authored on different MIDI hardware to play back on the Multimedia PC without modification.
Media control support through the Media Control Interface (MCI) that can accommodate any media-related device including digital audio devices, scanners, video overlay cards, and videotape players.
Several new VGA video display drivers, including: a high resolution display driver for 8-bit VGA+ (256-color) display adapters with improved performance and new features; a high resolution display driver to display 256-color bitmaps in 16 shades of gray on a standard 16-color VGA display; and a display driver to show 256-color bitmaps at 320-by-200 resolution.
A new extensible control panel that allows application developers to add custom control panel applications (also known as applets). Also included are new control panel applets that allow users to change display drivers, set up a screen-saver, select sounds to associate with system events, and map MIDI instruments so that externally produced MIDI files will play without modification.
Support for analog joysticks.
These multimedia extensions to Windows 3.0 provide multimedia developers with a standard system software platform on which to build and deliver their applications. You also need a personal computer able to unleash this power. The Multimedia Personal Computer is the component that makes this possible.