Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!uafhp!uafcseg!bbs00244
From: bbs00244@uafcseg.uucp (Viet Ho)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: AmiExpo...quick review...
Keywords: 24 bits, DCTV, JMAN
Message-ID: <5360@uafhp.uark.edu>
Date: 7 Oct 90 07:58:42 GMT
Sender: netnews@uafhp.uark.edu
Organization: College of Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Lines: 75


This gonna be a quick review since I burn't
out and gonna be back tomorrow at the show
for Allen Hasting's LiteWave lecture...

Downside:
NewTek wasn't present, and C= had a dinky 
booth with no Amiga UnixSYSVR4 or Lowell
combo...

Upside:  24 bit color finally!

DCTV!  I must have one of these puppies!
Creative was selling them for about $400
a piece.   DC had a huge booth demoing
their 24 bit HAM-E like composite/digitizing
box.  They were showing a slick looking
paint program that comes with it and allows
you to paint in full NTSC 16mil colors.
Also were some realtime DCTV anims going on 
off the IVS HD.
Looks like this could be the next DigiView
hit for the AMiga!

HAM=E :  not too impressive.. sorry BB 8-(
At least they were first to ship....

M.A.S.T.  also jumped in the HAM-E bandwagon
with their own ColorBurst box (I may have
the name wrong).   It works sorta like a HAM-E
in that in plugs into the RGB ports, but that's
where the simliarity ends...  It supposedly
has it's own small memory buffer which the custom
chips can access and alloows for TRUE 24 bit
per pixel in the amiga 320xXXX modes and 16
colors from a palette of 16 million in the
hires modes.   The images looked crisped and
sharp not soft and NTSC fuzzyines like DCTV.
Since the image is in the little buffer,
you can't do real-time anims.   Price: $495

Progressive Peripherals showed their Video Blendor
(supposedly a Toaster contendor) which sports 
a 34020 base (VideoMaster32) 32 bit graphics buffer/card
(8bit overlay,24bit image) w/ resolution up to 1024X1024
in 16 million color glory.   It could also do stuff
like the Toaster's DVE, whipes, chroma FX, etc...
Expect 4th quarter 90 or 1st Quarter 91.... Price..
not as cheap as a Toaster! 

Also at the PP booth was a real live 68040 card for the
A3000 w/ an optional DC(data compression) unit on board.
The rep said they are waiting on Motorola to deliver more
stable 040's. The one shown wasn't able to do anything much
since it had a bad FPU (awe shucks, no raytracing gymnastics!)
but the rep assured me that the 040 by itself outperforms
the 68882 by a factor of 2-3.   Expect em by XMas (great 
present for that raytracing guru in your family8-) and only
$999 w/68040 and w/out DC.  $1299 comes w/ the  data compressor.
This does realtime hardware lempel compression on data writing
to media (HD, floppies, etc...) for tight space storage...pretty
neat!


Phew... ok so I lied.....8-)   fingers are getting weak...

Oh, one more thing, Hash's Animation JourneyMan  was demoed.
I was quite impressed.  It's really better than what I expected
.   Forget Imagine! (BTW Impulse had a lame demo, I was quite
dissappointed).   I'll rehash on JMan when I come back tomorrow
to play with it and listen to the legend... AH FILMS demo LightWaves...


-Viet
 Viet.HO@samba.acs.unc.edu