CD and DVD Drives

This section presents the requirements for CD and DVD drives.

System includes CD drive or other method for installing the operating system

Required

The server system must include either CD drive support or another method to enable the installation (or reinstallation) of the operating system. In a cluster, at least one node must have a CD drive.

CD Drive Requirements

This section summarizes requirements for CD drives. A CD drive is not required if another method is provided to support operating system installation. However, if a CD drive is present, it must comply with these requirements.

CD drive provides 8x or higher performance

Required

The CD drive must support 1200 KB per second average throughput or higher performance when running in the fully on power state. For recording CD drives, a write/read speed of 2x/8x or higher performance is required.

CD drive is CD-Enhanced compatible

Required

The CD drive must be able to mount multisession CD-ROM discs, even if track 1 is Red Book audio. Microsoft recommends use of the Sony ReadTOC method for SCSI-2 multisession support, as noted in the MMC-2 standard.

CD-Enhanced support must comply with Blue Book standards, as defined in Enhanced Music CD Specification, Version 1.0.

CD drive supports specified logical and physical CD formats

Required

At a minimum, the CD device must be compatible with the following formats to ensure cross-media compatibility, based on compliance with the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) MultiRead Specification for CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-R/RW, and DVD-ROM Devices, Version 1.11:

• Logical formats: CD Red Book (CD-Audio), Yellow Book (CD-ROM), Orange Book parts II and III (packet writing if recordable), White Book, Blue Book, and UDF version 1.5 and 2.0
  
  
• Physical formats: ROM (stamped), and Orange Book part II (CD-R) and part II (CD-RW)

Note: Any ATAPI CD drive designed to play back CD-I content must return a minimum of two track entries for the READ-TOC (0x43) command. These two track entries must be a track 01 entry and a track 0xAA entry for the lead-out address. Drives that do not comply with this minimum requirement cannot play back CD-I movies.

ATA/ATAPI CD drive complies with SFF-8020i, v. 2.6

Required

CD drives attached to the system using the ATA interface must support the hardware and protocols documented in the ATA Packet Interface for CD-ROMs, SFF-8020i, Version 2.6 or later.

Recommended: Support for the READ CD-DA command as defined in the MMC-2 standard.

CD drive supports multisession and compatibility forms of the READ_TOC command

Required

Both multisession forms (01b and 10b) as well as the compatibility form (00b) of the READ_TOC command, must be implemented. This requirement ensures complete support for CD multisession capabilities.

ATA/ATAPI CD changer meets MMC-2 standard

Required

If an ATAPI-compatible CD changer is present that has a capacity for seven or fewer discs, the device must comply with MMC-2 standard.

System BIOS or option ROM supports El Torito No Emulation mode

Required

For server systems that include CD and DVD drives, the system BIOS or option ROM must support the No Emulation mode defined in El Torito—Bootable CD-ROM Format Specification, Version 1.0, published by IBM and Phoenix.

A removable USB mass storage device must not be the primary boot device.

CD drive uses push-to-close design

Recommended

A motorized design is not required, but if it is implemented, the device must be designed so the user has three options to close the device when inserting a disc:

• Physically push on the bay
  
  
• Physically push the close button on the bay housing
  
  
• Select a software-supported option to close the device

DVD Drive Requirements

This section summarizes requirements for supporting DVD drives. A DVD drive is not required in a server system, but if present, it must comply with these requirements. Systems targeted for use with Windows NT Server/Enterprise Edition should provide DVD drive capabilities.

For more information about DVD support under Windows NT, see the articles at http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/dvd/.

DVD device provides 2x minimum transfer rate or better performance anywhere on the disk

Required

The minimum sustained DVD device media transfer rate must be at least 2 MB per second for read operations from the DVD disk.

Recommended: A 4x DVD-ROM at 4 MB per second sustained from the DVD disk.

DVD drive and controller support bus master DMA transfers

Required

If DVD capability is present in a server, the drive and controller must support byte-aligned, multisegment, bus master DMA transfers.

If attached by way of an ATA interface, ATAPI DVD drives and ATA system-board implementations must support DMA as specified in ATA/ATAPI-4.

DVD drive meets minimum compatibility requirements

Required

DVD drives must support all the functionality of CD drives as outlined elsewhere in this document. Specifically, the DVD drive must be compatible with the following formats to ensure that the DVD drive can read earlier media:

• Logical formats: CD Red Book (CD-Audio), Yellow Book (CD-ROM), White Book, Orange Book parts II and III (packet writing), Blue Book, UDF Version 1.5 and 2.0, and DVD video, if applicable.
  
  
• Physical formats: ROM (stamped), Orange Book part II (CD-R) and part III (CD-RW), and ECMA-267 and ECMA-268 (DVD-ROM).

Recommended: Support for ECMA-274 (PC+RW) and ECMA-272, 273 (DVD-RAM 1.0 and DVD-R).

Conforming to OSTA MultiRead Specification, Version 1.11 indicates compliance with all of the above CD compatibility requirements.

DVD drive meets MMC-2 standard

Required

The MMC-2 standard defines the implementation requirements that the Windows NT operating system supports. A DVD drive must comply with the MMC-2 standard. Additionally, the drive must support the following commands:

DVD drives must also support the following:

• Timeout model as designed and documented in MMC-2.
  
  
• The Get Event Status command (Media Event Status class) and all related commands, including Persistent Prevent/Allow, as defined in MMC-2.
  
  
• Get Configuration command for Morphing class devices (Class 2), as defined in MMC-2. Windows uses the Get Configuration command to determine whether media event status is supported correctly.

DVD drive uses push-to-close design

Recommended

A motorized design is not required, but if it is implemented, the device must be designed so the user has three options to close the device when inserting a disc:

• Physically push on the bay
  
  
• Physically push the close button on the bay housing
  
  
• Select a software-supported option to close the device

DVD drive supports defect management

Required

The drive must support the defect management that is transparent to the operating system, according to industry standards. Defect management for DVD-RAM media is defined in DVD Specifications for Rewritable Disc, Part 1: Physical Specifications, published by Toshiba Corporation. Defect management for DVD+RW is defined in ECMA-274.

System meets video playback requirements if DVD drive supports DVD-Video playback

Required

The following capabilities are required for DVD drives that support DVD-Video playback:

• DVD drive supports copyright protection. The drive must support a licensed content scramble system (CSS) copyright-protection scheme and provide support for CSS-protected discs to ensure proper protection for all content produced in accordance with CSS, as defined in DVD Specification, Version 1.0 or later.

Software is provided as part of the Windows NT operating system support for DVD to facilitate the authentication process required by this scheme, thus allowing a DVD drive to authenticate and transfer keys with a CSS decrypter. Operating system software acts as the agent to allow either hardware or software decrypters to be authenticated.

Playback of regionalized movies must be handled in accordance with the CSS requirements and the interfaces as defined in the Mt. Fuji 2.0 specification for Phase II regionalization (RPC II). Version 2.0 of the Mt. Fuji specification will be proposed to the Small Form Factor committee as SFF 8090 Version 2.0 Revision 1.0. DVD implementations should conform to this specification if it is approved before these design guide requirements take effect.

• DVD decoder driver correctly handles media types, time discontinuity, and decode-rate adjustment. This requirement specifies that the vendor-supplied minidrivers for DVD, MPEG-2, and AC-3 decoders have the following capabilities:
  • Use correct media types. This includes validating all format block fields on connection and on every IPin::QueryAccept message.
    
    
  • Query for IMediaSample2 on every received media sample to test for a time discontinuity bit. It is also acceptable to query on every video/audio frame to reduce CPU overhead.
    
    
  • Adjust decode rate in response to IPin::NewSegment() calls for video and subpicture.
• DVD decoder supports subpicture compositing and closed captioning. The system must be capable of displaying subpicture data as well as providing closed-captioning support for all such data stored on the disc. This requires YUV offscreen surface support, as defined later in this list.

Subpicture streams must be supported as defined in the DVD Specification, Version 1.0, from Toshiba Corporation. Alpha blending, or a simulation implemented in the driver, is required for static menus.

• Subpicture decoder correctly handles subpicture properties and other functions. The minidriver for the subpicture decoder must be able to correctly handle the following:
  • Set the subpicture property
    
    
  • Turn subpicture compositing on and off
    
    
  • Set the highlight rect parameters

For information, see the Microsoft DirectX® 5.1 SDK (provided in the Microsoft Platform SDK) and the DirectX 5.0 information in Windows NT 5.0 DDK.

• System supports seamless DVD-Video 1.0 navigation. This requirement includes menu navigation and video selection, and language and subpicture track selection to support the user’s ability to navigate DVD-Video discs. Test sources include, but are not limited to, the following:
  • Matsushita Electronics Incorporated (MEI) test disc
    
    
  • Joe Kane Productions Video Essentials disc
    
    
  • Microsoft test disc
• MPEG-2 playback provides high-quality video output. MPEG-2 solutions must provide high-quality video display output, as defined by the following:
  • Smooth frame delivery, with all video fields and frames from the MPEG source decoded.
    
    
  • Audio and video synchronized to within one and a half video frames, with synchronization not allowed to drift out over time.
    
    
  • No tearing - provide proper video buffering, such as double buffering.
    
    
  • Correct display of multiple aspect-ratio content. The material should be displayed according to the aspect ratio information in the MPEG header.

This requires support for YUV offscreen surface and up/down interpolated scaling, as defined in the following requirement.

• Graphics adapter supports DVD movie playback features. Any system with a DVD drive that includes the ability to play back MPEG-2 data streams must meet the requirements listed here. However, this requirement does not apply for systems that include DVD drive for storage purposes but do not include DVD-Video playback software. The following capabilities are required for solutions that use either hardware or software MPEG-2 decoders:
  • Up and down scaling with bilinear interpolation. Recommended: 5 taps, both vertically and horizontally.
    
    
  • YUV 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 planar offscreen surface support.
    
    
  • VGA destination color keying for video rectangle.
    
    
  • AGP or PCI bus mastering.