I had a response to my previous post from staff at Adobe.  They seem to be aware of the performance issues I was complaining about but there doesn't seem to be any urgency in adressing it.  Taking advantage of ardware acceleration is coming but it will be for "Full Screen" only, meaning it is not going to really help Digital Signage applications.  It will not work where the Flash component is hosted within another application as it would be for Digital Signage Software.  Digitial Signage must represent a tiny fraction of what Flash is used for but it is disapointing nonetheless to hear the long understood problems of flash performance will remain.  This can only increase anticipation of what SilverLight will do (and let's hope they don't repeat the same mistakes)