Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!gatech!taco!hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu!kdarling From: kdarling@hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: CDTV & CD-I The Whole Picture Message-ID: <1991Apr20.130639.27962@ncsu.edu> Date: 20 Apr 91 13:06:39 GMT References: <1991Apr18.161346.3409@ncsu.edu> <1991Apr18.174928.21079@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Sender: news@ncsu.edu (USENET News System) Organization: North Carolina State University Lines: 60 > Kevin, the World Atlas, for example, wasn't "disappointing". It wasn't > miraculous, but it was quite nice. Perhaps people should post more reviews and comments, then? The _only_ two I'd seen so far on the Atlas from Amigans were these, and I quote: "I question the quality of some of the software. (Let me preface this by saying I saw limited examples of the CD ROM software.) Some of the graphics have a severe case of the "jaggies" which I assume should look somewhat better on a television. The software which featured a little bear had very limited animation for a program that can access 550K of storage. The map software looked good at first but during scrolling we could see the legend of the origional map and it seemed that we were just looking at a digitized blowup of an atlas you might already have at home. I hope the rest of the software is better than the limited amount of stuff I saw because there is so much potential (I didn't see any of the reference material except for the atlas.)" .... and ... "I watched only for a few minutes as what was available on it looked pretty lame. The Atlas program seemed _very_ limited." > Also, you have to expect that most of the people around here are NOT the > target audience for CDTV and CD-I. These are hardened computer users [...] Ummm. Yes. Then I guess these hardened users can handle another bombshell: Not only does OS-9 run on the basic CD-I chips, but also a realtime Unix clone with MMU protection and paging, GEM, and windowing Tripos. Perhaps they should soften up a bit, as they might own a CD-I video based computer before long :-) > I don't believe that photorealistic graphics are necessary for CDTV to > succeed. I think that HAM digitized images are close enough that most people > will consider them satisfactory, although certainly CD-I will be better. In most cases, I agree. BTW, astute readers have noticed that I never directly compare the systems (I only told what CD-I has) until others do so first. Still, we should note that HAM only has 16 grey levels, which can be a factor. And once again, if HAM is "satisfactory", then I guess all those video authors buying DCTV and other boards must be wasting their money? > BTW, don't forget that one of the tools for CDTV development is AmigaVision. > That is certainly helpful for development, especially in terms of > time savings. There are comparable, but more professional oriented, tools in CD-I studios. Time savings in the AV learning curve perhaps, but that's mostly a factor for the relatively newer market of CDTV authors. And AV is certainly not the tool people would use for CD-audio capturing and editing, video digitizing, etc. As an ARexx frontend, yes. But directly, no way. In many ways, both systems will end up having similar studios. Envision a place where everyone has a workstation, all linked through networking. One person is mousing up an audio/video time script; another is sampling and editing new audio; another is touching up digitized video data; another is playing back 24-bit color animations as a testbed. All these A/V files are converted to IFF for interchange, and the group's editor is in another room testing out how the title plays back by using one of several 1-gigabyte hard disks (for CDROM emulation). Sounds like an Amigan's dream place to work. Yet I've just described a typical large CD-I studio. Surprised? - kevin