This code FourCC : BW10 is the hardware codec for the Broadway hardware-based MPEG. There are not many of them around today so it would be unlikely to find these today in the computer. Broadway has since become Broadcom.
FourCC : BW10
The Broadway hardware-based MPEG decoder was not a codec perse. The definition of a codec is “coder-decoder” which can be software and hardware based. This will compresses and decompress your digital media be this audio or video. The most common codecs used for video compression include H.264, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4, among others.
Broadway hardware was a specialized hardware component. This was designed to accelerate the decoding of MPEG video streams.Much like a hardware accelerator. This would take encoded video data as input and produces a decoded video stream that can be displayed on a device’s screen.
The hardware-based approach to decoding MPEG video was intended for high-performance as well as low-power video playback capabilities. Now this was made for using specialized hardware for video decoding. there was improved video playback performance without using much CPU power but we have since moved on to better codecs and more powerful processors. See also the Fraunhofer MPEG Layer-3 Audio Decoder as well as the LameXP and FFDShow MPEG4 Video Decoder.
So to sum it all up, Broadway is never a codec. However is was a hardware-based decoder designed to improve the performance and quality of MPEG video playback on a wide range of devices.
