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From: rblewitt@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (Richard Blewitt)
Newsgroups: comp.multimedia
Subject: Amiga multimedia features (was Re: NeXT/Amiga Multimedia..)
Message-ID: <20760@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 18 Jun 91 21:01:27 GMT
References: <1991Jun15.225740.3566@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <arctngnt.7790@amiganet.chi.il.us> <2561@gold.gvg.tek.com>
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 81

In article <2561@gold.gvg.tek.com> johna@gold.gvg.tek.com (John Abt) writes:
>Some of us do not know anything about the Amiga. Could someone 
>post, in simple terms, devoid of BS, just exactly what it is about 
>the Amiga that makes it a good multimedia platform?
>
>Just curious,    John Abt

There are several things that make the Amiga an excelent platform
for multimedia.  First the hardware:  The graphics on the Amiga are
based on the video standards (NTSC and PAL), so the Amiga can handle
the full video field including overscan, and works with the
interlace of the video signals.  The Amiga also has custom graphics
chips which allow for very fast and clean animation by using N
buffering, and timing the switching with the vertical refresh.  The
graphics chips are also capable of other effects which I am not
familiar enough with to discus.  On the audio side, the Amiga has
built in 4 channel stereo sound.  The expansion bus also fits in
with the multimedia design (the simplest way to describe it is that
it is like the I*M microchannel design, only a bit faster).  Please
note that the design of the Amiga allows graphics, audio, disk and
bus activities to go on simultaniously with only a minimal use of
the CPU.

On the software side of things, the operating system is a real-time
multitasking OS, with strong support for interprocess communication.
The upshot of all this is that is it very easy for the Amiga to have
everything going on at once, which is the essence of multimedia.  

I hope this constitutes a reasonable discussion of the multimedia
features of the Amiga without BS or hype.

Rick
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built in sereo sound

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The generic .sig          Rick Blewitt     rblewitt@ucsd.edu