What's the story about the multimedia era?

[Iggy]

One thing I liked about that era was the add-in decoder card.

I've still got some DXR2 and DXR3 cards around somewhere. Once drivers became available that could use them outside of Creative's own software they became useful.

I think the Toshiba Spurs engine cards made Leadtek are used for video encoding/decoding.

We could still use something like this for MorphOS as our video drivers don't support GPU assisted playback.
And legacy hardware could use something like this too as it might enable DVD and HD video playback.

[Iggy]

Yes, I would say the multimedia revolution is all around us.  It turned out different than we thought in the '80s and it's still evolving.  Of the original companies at the forefront only Apple remains.  But Google seems poised to be the next leader.

I don't think you're giving Microsoft enough credit here. Sure they follow other company's paths, but they still have a large market segment.
Apple may have the iPod and iTune, but personally I have no intention of using either one as Apple's content control is offensive to me.