Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!lll-winken!taco!hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu!kdarling From: kdarling@hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: CDTV News Message-ID: <1991Jun13.020334.28425@ncsu.edu> Date: 13 Jun 91 02:03:34 GMT References: <1991Jun12.192948.20028@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <1991Jun12.205030.4401@news.iastate.edu> Sender: news@ncsu.edu (USENET News System) Organization: North Carolina State University Lines: 34 taab5@isuvax.iastate.edu (Marc Barrett) writes: >> One new feature, CDXL, will let developers display video images >> from a CD-ROM disk on screen. Limited to images covering about one >> third of the screen because of the amount of data that must be >> transferred, CDXL is an interim solution until the Motion Picture >> Expert Group (MPEG) standard is completed. > > Wasn't the MPEG standard completed last December? If so, I don't > know what Commodore is waiting for. Oddly, I hear conflicting reports. News releases say it was completed in December. Insiders say it wasn't quite done. Who knows? But I'd guess that CBM would smartly wait for cheaper MPEG chips from other manufacturers (such as Motorola, who is developing them for CD-I). I'm curious myself as to what CDXL is, if it (as the report says) requires "no additional hardware or software". >> Commodore announced plans to make CDTV compatible with Kodak's new >> Photo CD system. [...] > > This sounds nice, but the problem is that the CDTV's color > capabilities are hardly photographic, especially compared to the CD-I > systems. Unless the color capabilities of the CDTV are drastically > improved, the limited color of the CDTV will not do justice to > digitized true-color stills. That's why CBM is supposedly talking about selling an inexpensive ($50?) DCTV output-only adapter to Photo-CD users. Altho that would still have several times lesser resolution than stock CD-I hardware (which has TWO nice video systems, allowing hardware mixing/fading between photos), a CDTV/DCTV adapter would be a lot better than using stock HAM mode. CBM is still trying. Gotta give them that! - kevin