Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!umich!wsu-cs!athena.cs.wayne.edu!jal
From: jal@athena.cs.wayne.edu (Jason Leigh)
Subject: CDTV misleading???!? Air Mouse and things.
Message-ID: <1991Jun4.204135.17497@cs.wayne.edu>
Sender: News@cs.wayne.edu
Organization: Wayne State University
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 91 20:41:35 GMT


I was at the Chicago CES yesterday and I spoke to Commodore about CDTV.
The representative told me that if I bought a CDROM drive for my
Amiga I still could not run CDTV software.  CDTV is not just a 500 with
a CD player.  There is evidently additional hardware to improve its
sound capabilities (of course).

Also in terms of misleading the consumer, Commodore was advertising its
A500 for about $500.  For the $500 you don't get a monitor but
instead you get the A520 video adapter that lets you plug your 500 to a
TV set at home.  I hate to be the consumer who is going to be disappointed
at the grungy display on his/her TV at home.

Magnavox came out with its CDI (CD Interactive) multimedia competitor for
CDTV.  Essentially the system is like the CDTV system but the software
available for CDTV was far more interesting.  CDTV has the advantage
over CDI of being expandable to accomodate, a keyboard, printer, disk drive
and in the future some other form of expansion.  The representative at 
Magnavox told me that the CDI was not expandable in anyway, or at least
Magnavox had no intentions of allowing for attachments.  I was however
quite impressed by the clarity of CDI's images over CDTV's.

One other thing that was very interesting (which complemented CDTV and CDI
very well) was the Air Mouse.  This is an infra-red pointing device which
is tracked by a receiver.  The receiver would then send the signals to the
CDTV or CDI and cause a movement in the cursor on the screen.  It has
great potential for graphical slide presentations, and it works very well
with CDTV's kids paint program.  The professional model ($500) works with the
IBM, Mac, Amiga.  The consumer version ($99) works only with CDTV and CDI.

Jason Leigh
jal@cs.wayne.edu


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