Indeed. The brand-new fancy Blue & White Power Mac G3's from early 1999 were the first Macs that shipped with a DVD drive, and they could play video DVD's but they had an obvious (and strange) additional decoder mezzanine card on the already unusual Rage128 PCI video card.
By the end of that year the G4 Power Macs were just barely fast enough to play DVD's with software decoding and assistance from the PCI or later AGP video card. And after a while (perhaps ~ 2002?), even the Blue G3's could do it in software even if you got a different video card, as long as you also upgraded to a G4 CPU (they were all in ZIF sockets).
It was very taxing on computers at y2k!
Later autumn 2000 G3 iMacs could also play DVD's but I think they needed special help from a video co-processor.
By the end of that year the G4 Power Macs were just barely fast enough to play DVD's with software decoding and assistance from the PCI or later AGP video card. And after a while (perhaps ~ 2002?), even the Blue G3's could do it in software even if you got a different video card, as long as you also upgraded to a G4 CPU (they were all in ZIF sockets).
It was very taxing on computers at y2k!
Later autumn 2000 G3 iMacs could also play DVD's but I think they needed special help from a video co-processor.