[sci.electronics] 60 min. of digital video on a CD

bill@videovax.Tek.COM (William K. McFadden) (03/19/87)

In this week's _TV_DIGEST_, there is an article about a new system unveiled
at last week's CD ROM conference in Seattle which makes possible 60-72 minutes
of NTSC or PAL quality digital video (with digital audio) on a CD.  It was
developed by RCA and another big company whose name escapes me at the moment.
The system is claimed to be completely interactive and the demonstration drew a
standing ovation from the crowd of 1000.  The heart of the system is two VLSI
chips developed by a third company (the article mentions who, but I don't have
it in front of me, and can't remember).  The demonstration took Philips by
surprise, because this system is sure to threaten their CD-V system, which
contains up to 5 min. of analog video plus 20 min. of CD digital audio on a CD.
Also threatened is their CD-I interactive system, since the new system (CVI ?)
is interactive.  Data compression is used.  Without compression, the system's
developers say 30 sec. of video would take an hour to play back.  I assume
this means they are using a 120:1 compression ratio (you can bet the audio is
compressed, too).  This system is sure to cause a rethinking about the way
video is encoded on optical discs and may upset the entire video disc industry,
according to experts.

I'll post more as I find out more.

DISCLAIMER:  The publishers of _TV_DIGEST_ get particularly nasty when they
discover someone has been copying or reproducing their articles, so let me say
that the above is my interpretation of the facts presented, and nowhere is the
article quoted directly.
-- 
Bill McFadden    Tektronix, Inc.  P.O. Box 500  MS 58-639  Beaverton, OR  97077
UUCP: ...{hplabs,uw-beaver,decvax}!tektronix!videovax!bill
GTE: (503) 627-6920        "How can I prove I am not crazy to people who are?"

cmcmanis@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis) (03/19/87)

> In this week's _TV_DIGEST_, there is an article about a new system unveiled
> at last week's CD ROM conference in Seattle which makes possible 60-72 minutes
> of NTSC or PAL quality digital video (with digital audio) on a CD.  

Actually it is called DVI for Digital-Video-Interactive. The technology was
shown by RCA (and developed by them) but *no* product plans were announced.
It is an amazing system, and the chips which were designed by RCA and 
produced by some custom silicon house consist of a video processor and
program storage. One of the things the video processor can do is 're-map'
video so that a frame taken by a 15mm fisheye lens can be viewed 
interactively by the viewer who can select the viewing angle from 90
degrees left to 90 degrees right, thru 90 degrees up or down. The video
processor remaps these views from the one fish-eye view. This makes things
like the MIT 'Walk thru Aspen Colo' possible with a lot fewer frames needed.
It isindeed a neat and wizzy technology.

--Chuck
I believe EE Times also had an article on this stuff.

-- 
--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.

hsu@eneevax.UUCP (Dave Hsu) (03/20/87)

In article <4286@videovax.Tek.COM> bill@videovax.Tek.COM (William K. McFadden) writes:
>In this week's _TV_DIGEST_, there is an article about a new system unveiled
>at last week's CD ROM conference in Seattle which makes possible 60-72 minutes
>of NTSC or PAL quality digital video (with digital audio) on a CD.  It was
>developed by RCA and another big company whose name escapes me at the moment.
>The system is claimed to be completely interactive and the demonstration drew a
>standing ovation from the crowd of 1000.  The heart of the system is two VLSI
>chips developed by a third company (the article mentions who, but I don't have
>it in front of me, and can't remember).  The demonstration took Philips by
>surprise, because this system is sure to threaten their CD-V system, which
>contains up to 5 min. of analog video plus 20 min. of CD digital audio on a CD.
>-- 
>Bill McFadden    Tektronix, Inc.  P.O. Box 500  MS 58-639  Beaverton, OR  97077

The other big company in question is GE which recently "merged with"
(read: bought) RCA, and the "third company" probably refers to the Sarnoff
labs, formerly RCA's and the birthplace of color TV, laserdiscs, and God
knows what else, which GE donated to SRI.

For a decent write-up, consult last week's Infoworld; for a better
write-up, look at last week's EE Times.  I believe the latter article
mentioned that (1) RCA/GE will continue to fund the research despite no
longer owning Sarnoff, and that (2) it won't see product for at least
another year or two.

-dave
-- 
David "bd" Hsu			Professional Undergrad & System Fascist
ARPA:	hsu@eneevax.umd.edu	UUCP: [seismo,allegra]!mimsy!eneevax!hsu
USNAIL: EE Computer Facility, Maryversity of Uniland, College Park, MD 20742

sdp@omssw1.UUCP (03/20/87)

In article <4286@videovax.Tek.COM> bill@videovax.Tek.COM (William K. McFadden) writes:
>In this week's _TV_DIGEST_, there is an article about a new system unveiled
>at last week's CD ROM conference in Seattle which makes possible 60-72 minutes
>of NTSC or PAL quality digital video (with digital audio) on a CD.
> ...
>The heart of the system is two VLSI
>chips developed by a third company (the article mentions who, but I don't have
>it in front of me, and can't remember).

From this, I'm guessing that when this emerges as a product, it will be a
complete player, not an accessory for a standard CD player.

If that's the case, then why limit the size to that of a CD?  There's not
enough space for your average movie.  I must be missing something here.

-- 

Scott Peterson, Intel Corp., Hillsboro, OR, ...!tektronix!ogcvax!omssw1!sdp

richd@sci.UUCP (03/21/87)

in article <4286@videovax.Tek.COM>, bill@videovax.Tek.COM (William K. McFadden) says:
> Xref: sci rec.video:772 rec.audio:1114 sci.electronics:353
> 
> The heart of the system is two VLSI
> chips developed by a third company (the article mentions who, 
> but I don't have it in front of me, and can't remember). 

	RCA developed two chips using our Genesil silicon compiler
and fabricated by VTI.  Thought I'd let you know, since we're
all gushy proud of ourselves over here.  RCA asked us not to say too
much, but man those chips are amazing!  I saw a demo of their
system and it was pretty exciting.
-------------------
Rich Doherty -- Silicon Compilers 
		decwrl!sci!richd

wjh@wayback.UUCP (03/27/87)

> 
> The other big company in question is GE which recently "merged with"
> (read: bought) RCA, and the "third company" probably refers to the Sarnoff
> labs, formerly RCA's and the birthplace of color TV, laserdiscs, and God
> knows what else, which GE donated to SRI.
> 

Don't make GE look so generous.  When they bought RCA, they got Sarnoff
Labs, seemingly a very valuable research facility.  GE already had their own
labs and thought Sarnoff was redundant, so they tried to sell the labs.
Turns out that anyone with enough money to buy the labs already had their
own labs and wasn't interested.  So GE donated the labs to non profit
Stanford Research Institute (private, not part of Stanford University).  The
tax write off will be worth on the order of 100 million dollars;  SRI is
immediately cutting staff 25%;  SRI has a 200 or so million dollar contract
to finish up research in progress at the labs in support of the RCA lines of
business.  The donation did NOT include the land, a very valuable piece of
land just outside Princeton; SRI is leasing the land back. (One rumor befor
the donation was that GE was considering shutting down the labs and selling
the land to developers for really big dollars.)

Bill Hery

sa@crlt.UUCP (03/30/87)

In article <15323@sun.uucp>, cmcmanis@sun.UUCP writes:
> 
> > In this week's _TV_DIGEST_, there is an article about a new system unveiled
> > at last week's CD ROM conference in Seattle which makes possible 60-72 minutes
> > of NTSC or PAL quality digital video (with digital audio) on a CD.  
> 
> Actually it is called DVI for Digital-Video-Interactive. The technology was
> shown by RCA (and developed by them) but *no* product plans were announced.
> It is an amazing system, and the chips which were designed by RCA and 
> produced by some custom silicon house consist of a video processor and
> program storage. One of the things the video processor can do is 're-map'
> video so that a frame taken by a 15mm fisheye lens can be viewed 
> interactively by the viewer who can select the viewing angle from 90
> degrees left to 90 degrees right, thru 90 degrees up or down. The video
> processor remaps these views from the one fish-eye view. This makes things
> like the MIT 'Walk thru Aspen Colo' possible with a lot fewer frames needed.
> It isindeed a neat and wizzy technology.
> 
> --Chuck
> I believe EE Times also had an article on this stuff.
> 
> -- 
> --Chuck McManis
> uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
> These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.

This sounds very interesting.   I was wondering
if a current  high end cd player  with digital outputs
could be used to "read" the data on one of these new  video cd disks.

Or will I have to go out and puchase another player to be  able
to use these new disks?    


What format is the data encoded on thes 
e video disks?



Scott Almburg

...!ihnp4!itivax!crlt!sa

Interface systems Inc
5855 Interface Dr.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
48103