One product from Sigma Designs that hooked up to VIP-style connectors (or similar) was the RealMagic Ventura . It was a PCI MPEG2 decoder card (for DVD decoding acceleration) with several headers that allowed connection to any of several different types of video cards . It was similar in function to the Hollywood Plus, but with an internal rather than an external pass-through scheme .

For lack of a better source of pictures, here is a link to a completed auction for one such card :
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SIGMA-DESIGNS-REAL-MA … =p2047675.l2557

and some info on the VIP interface, a descendant of the VESA Feature Connector (VFC) :
https://books.google.ca/books?id=eV1_LjW3pTkC … t%20vga&f=false

Thanks for your reply! I actually know about these PCI cards, including some Mpact! based card from STB with a similar set of headers.
What I am looking for is some daughterboard that would not rely upon the PCI bus but only on the VIP ports.

You'd think daughtercards connected to VIP would need to be powered somehow though.

On an unrelated note - what would be the best card that will run reelmagic MPEG games?

Hm, I always thought that all extended feature connectors (apart from the original one) provided some current on their own. Am I wrong?

hard1k wrote:

all extended feature connectors provided some current on their own. Am I wrong?

even if you are, power could've been supplied via diskette power connector in the worst case (with an additional cost due to some vrm elements) - i have never had such a thing however

Well I can't recall anything that was powered directly from any VESA connector. Lots of proprietary expansion connectors though.

The only way to get the MP4 hardware decompression of the Sigma Designs Xcard in a window (you'd get a green screen in the window normally) was to feed the VIP output of the card into some sort of capture device.. Not sure if the VIP in on these cards qualifies. It could be handy for this purpose if so.

I think the Geforce 3 might have been the last card that had the VIP connector.