Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ncar!hao!hull
From: hull@hao.ucar.edu (Howard Hull)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: LIVE! digitizer (small computer NTSC video, really)
Summary: Do IBM & Mac volume markets really attract better designers?
Keywords: price performance desk top video
Message-ID: <4032@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 20 Aug 89 17:17:05 GMT
References: <206@crash.cts.com>
Sender: news@ncar.ucar.edu
Reply-To: hull@hao.UCAR.EDU (Howard Hull)
Distribution: na
Organization: High Altitude Observatory/NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 60


Just last week I was discussing the matter of desk-top video with the guy in
the next office who has a Mac II.  He wanted to know what I'd recommend for
him.  I told him that, to my knowledge anyway, the Amiga was the first home
computer that was able to do NTSC video.  I told him that I had heard that
some designers over the last two years had come out with some NTSC video
boards for the IBM, and that there were rumors that some were out as well
for the Mac.  I thus find it interesting that you infer that video products
for the IBM and the Mac are superior to those available for the Amiga.

I find this rather strange, given how long the built-in Amiga NTSC capability
has been available for such designers to work with, compared with how long any
such capability has been available for the IBM or the Mac.  Are not the scan
rates for the IBM and the Mac preclusive to NTSC, thus forcing the designers
to incorporate on-board bit map storage in NTSC video board designs for either
of these two computers?  Or do they have some kind of synchronous samplers
that work their way through an image in the mother board ram?  It seems like
it would create a tremendous amount of bus contention to do that.  Also, NTSC
is NTSC.  It's really lousy (especially once it's committed to a modulated RF
carrier), even at its best - and never mind where it came from.  So why try so
hard to pretty it up?  If you're going with Super VHS, stay with RGB as long
as you can, and then hit the deck with it, I say.  Anybody seen any equipment
for doing this?

I do have a Pacific Peripherals frame grabber, and I must say, though it may
(as others have said on the net) be much better than the LIVE board, it still
wreaks considerable malice on whatever image it grabs.  In fact, its clutches
are really gross: it looks to me like the "pixels" it gloms onto are easily a
large fraction of a microsecond wide, and this really destroys the content of
usual-scale images of people and things.  The capture software I got with it
will not work with CBM's A2620 '020 accelerator board; that implies a rather
unsophisticated timing method was incorporated by the PP&S designers (i.e.,
a *software* *loop*?!!!).  Given that the Amiga medium resolution pixels
(320 of 'em) are each 150 nanoseconds wide, it does seem as though the PP&S
unit needs to have much better performance.  One cannot tell an eye from a
nose, and a paisley tie comes out looking like Garfield's Lasagna.  It does
however do a fairly decent job of mapping out the NTSC color wheel (such as
it is).  As the PP&S Frame Grabber goes onto your heap for the handy sum of
nearly 550 Yankee Imperialist Dollars, do I therefore need to expect that a
board for the Mac II which puts up high-res pixels (say, 768 of 'em in one
horizontal line) would cost a cool $6600, and thus what we are really talking
about is an Amiga owner's budget compared to a Mac owner's budget?

As well, what's the deal?  Are the designers going to the IBM and the Mac just
because, as was said in 1987,  "Rounded to the nearest million, zero Amigas
have been sold", and if so, are they putting more power (through VLSI, PALs
and/or Macro-Cell logic) onto the IBM and Mac boards, which, after all, must
conform to roughly the same real-estate as is available in an Amiga 2000, but
must do the job without the benefit of native NTSC video timing being available
right there on the mother board?

And, last but not least, can you name an example of an NTSC board that's to
your liking, and that's currently available for an IBM, and another currently
available for a Mac II - along with a typical price and (possibly) the name
of a distributor who stocks them?  I just wondered...
							Howard Hull
							hull@hao.ucar.edu

"How many Mac programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb?  Just one,
 but you have to wait while the world revolves around the Mac programmer..."