Developing a Device Driver for a Networked Media Device (Windows Embedded CE 6.0)

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1/5/2010

You might need to develop additional device drivers for your networked media device. For more information about developing a device driver, see Developing a Device Driver. For more information about the device drivers that are supplied with Windows Embedded CE, see Windows CE Drivers and Driver Catalog Items.

The following table shows recommendations for device drivers for a networked media device.

Driver Recommendations

Audio driver

The audio driver must be able to perform the following tasks:

  • Be efficient for the type of audio experience that you desire (for example, basic stereo or digital output).
  • Provide the user interface (UI) with the minimal sound requirements.
  • Support 16-bit stereo data.

For more information about audio drivers, see Audio Drivers.

Display driver

To maximize the performance of the networked media device, the UI for the networked media device requires a display driver that supports the following tasks:

  • Per-pixel alpha blending.
  • 2-D bit blitting for source-to-destination copying, and for the stretching and the resizing of bitmaps.
  • Support for one or more overlays.
  • Transparency.

The display driver should make the best use of the hardware by utilizing hardware color space conversations, hardware flipping, and so on.

Intel provides a display driver, the Digital Set Top Box Display Driver, that supports interlaced video and a vertical blanking interval.

For more information about the Intel Digital Set Top Box Display Driver, see this Web site.

For more information about display drivers, see Display Drivers.

DirectShow filter driver

To take full advantage of all the features of the networked media device, you need a DirectShow filter driver. If you do not provide a DirectShow filter driver, Windows Embedded CE defaults to software rendering, which is slow and consumes large amounts your computing resources.

For better performance on your networked media device, consider investigating media acceleration in the DirectShow filter driver and in the DirectShow DirectX Media Object (DMO).

For more information about DirectShow filter drivers, see DirectShow Architecture for Filter Developers.

For more information about drivers in general, consult the documentation that is provided with the Microsoft Windows DDK.

Network driver

The wired or wireless network drivers must be efficient to support the design goals of the networked media device.

For more information about network drivers, see Network Drivers.

Third-Party Device Drivers and Third-Party BSPs

You can access third-party device drivers and third-party BSPs are by navigating to the Microsoft Platform Builder Start page, choosing Downloads, and then choosing the Downloads tab or the Drivers tab.

For more information about third-party BSPs and third-party device drivers, see Hardware Compatibility and Third-party Device Drivers.

See Also

Other Resources

Developing a Networked Media Device
Troubleshooting a Device Driver
Windows Embedded CE Test Kit