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From: marti@saturn.ucsc.edu (Marti Atkinson)
Newsgroups: comp.multimedia
Subject: Re: multimedia configuration
Message-ID: <14087@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 3 Apr 91 20:03:35 GMT
References: <1991Apr2.143441.21087@aucs.AcadiaU.ca>
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Organization: Univ of Calif, Santa Cruz
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>I've spent last couple of weeks reviewing various authoring systems for
>IBM-compatibles. Now, I'd like to start working on *multimedia*.
>Here, at Acadia we have several 386's, IBM clones and right now none of
>them has any "multimedia hardware" (CD-ROM, etc.). I'd like to be able to
>store/play sound and store/play realtime animation. Would you please send
>me suggestions as to what I should buy (for example, what hardware boards
>for the sound; can DVI be installed in a clone, etc.). My budget is rather
>limited, and I'm too poor to waste money on hardware that hasn't been 
tested.

We've been working with the AVC boards put out by IBM.  We like the boards
themselves and they do hardware compression of audio and video stills very
well.  The user interface for the software which comes with the boards
can leave several things to be desired, especially the graphics.  At the
moment this setup doesn't handle real time animation or moving video
in any satisfactory fashion.  However, Intel is due to put out a new
DVI chip next year which is supposed to support both moving video and
3D graphics.  With the announcement of the new chip, IBM is supposed to be
also the release of new products that use the chip... so it's a
wait and see proposition.

You might also want to investigate TookBook and Authorware which
are both authoring systems which may give you more of what you
want right now on your hardware.


Marti Atkinson
University of Calif. at Santa Cruz  
marti@saturn.ucsc.edu
marti@uccrls.BITNET
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