Question: I'm looking for a barcode reader component. Hoping to use it in a Silverlight Out of browser Application. Eventually be ported for usage in windows 8. Hoping to supliment physical bar code readers. Possibly reading other types the physical device may not be able to decode.

<http://blog.lemqi.com/?cat=3> a posting from 2008 has a round up comparing different components. A few look promising but it's a bit dated. 

General recommendations, or general products to stay away from would be greatly appreciated. Open source projects are welcome, I briefly looked at a Silverlight port of Zebra Crossing(zxing) but the documentation looked scarce.

Looking for something that will work world wide, and detects the barcode types.

Answer: 
Ended up going with <http://imagetools.codeplex.com/>

Nice little added wrapper for Zebra Crossing for Silverlight. Had some other features I was considering using.

If anyone is interested, grab the source code, there are examples. Basic run down incase anyone is interested.

**Add Dependencies**

App.xaml.cs

```
Decoders.AddDecoder<PngDecoder>(); //or whatever format your barcode is in.  

```

**Load Image**

```
FileInfo fileInfo = path;
var extendedImage = new ExtendedImage();
extendedImage.SetSource(fileInfo.OpenRead());
Image.Source=extendedImage;  //Image is of type AnimatedImage and found in the xaml. 

```

**Scan Image**

```
IBarcodeReader barcodeReader = new ZxingBarcodeReader(true, BinarizerMode.Hybrid)
BarcodeResult result = barcodeReader.ReadBarcode(Image.Source);

// Set some values in the xaml for results

Barcode.Text = result.Text
BarcodeFormat.Text = result.Format.ToString();

```

This is more or less the example. I just trimmed it down so people could understand it at a glance.
Based on your requirements, the [ClearImage Barcode Recognition SDK](http://www.inliteresearch.com/barcode-recognition/) from Inlite Research should work well for you. It's designed for Windows with COM and .Net APIs so should have no issues with Silverlight or Windows 8.

It handles all popular 1D and 2D barcodes types and reliably handles all types of damaged barcodes (which happen more often than you may think).

*Note: I have done some work for Inlite*