Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!udel!mmdf
From: fhwri%CONNCOLL.BITNET@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: What the heck IS "Interactive TV"? (long)
Message-ID: <50811@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Date: 15 Apr 91 18:54:49 GMT
Sender: mmdf@ee.udel.edu
Lines: 40

>
> At the price point indicated, I don't think CDTV is going to be that
> successful. Most consumer electronics products don't generally take off until
> they drop below the $500 mark (e.g. VCRs, CD players etc.) and CDTV could
> wind up having the same fate as the laserdisc player-a great technology that
> nobody bought because there were cheaper, albeit inferior, alternatives.
> Ditto CD-I unless they can make them cheap enough (which maybe the Japanese
> can). I would think most such products would likely end up in
> schools as a cheaper alternative to interactive laserdisc systems.
>

Here at Connecticut College in New London, an Arts & Technology symposium
was held last weekend. The local Commodore dealer, One Byte of Quaker Hill,
CT was given both the "Struggles for Justice" videodisk/AmigaVision package
and a CDTV. Teachers liked the videodisk package a LOT better than the CDTV;
the CDTV controller (which strongly resembles a Nintendo controller, with
the same directional keys and an A and B button) was criticized by one
teacher as being inferior to a joystick or mouse.

Other people, _notably students_ at the school, were VERY intrigued by the
fact that it would play CD+G disks (Lou Reed's "New York" was playing). It
seems that record stores would make a most effective showplace for CDTV, and
I urge CBM Marketing to investigate this technique for building interest in
CDTV in the marketplace.

CDTV is something different; a completely unique device, and it'll either
become something that lots of people just have to have (like a VCR, Walkman,
or microwave oven) (or, hey...a Commodore 64) or it will become another Plus
4 for Commodore.

I THINK that it will take off, especially when the street price drops to
about $600. More than one person observing it said that if they were buying
a CD player, they'd definitely think about CDTV instead.

                                                --Rick Wrigley
                                                fhwri@conncoll.bitnet

                I *ALSO* want a game that looks like
                SHADOW OF THE BEAST and plays like
                LEISURE SIUT LARRY...