thomsen@spf.trw.com (Mark R. Thomsen) (06/07/91)
A couple of us visited the Digital World conference today explicitly to examine the 21" and 17" monitor to determine which to purchase. We do a lot of image processing work (e.g., SPOT, Landsat, machine vision) and the monitor display quality is important. We decided the 21" is better for image processing because - the convergence is better across the screen - the dynamic range (brightness range) is larger - the anti-glare coating is better - the phosphor geometry seems better for gray scale display - the big screen is nice So we buy 21" monitors. This is not to say the 17" is bad - I think it is pretty good for the price - but the Hitachi 21" is a state-of- the-art monitor in this price level. We saw the NeXTtv app, as well as some others. Good stuff. The video looks good and the ability to capture frames and integrate with other apps is the key for us. (Otherwise just displaying the video on a monitor is, as someone else noted, turning a $15K computer system into a $500 TV). A clue on NeXTdimension performance - beef up the CPU memory as far as your checkbook allows if you are doing image processing. We found this out using prototypes and the guys at DW repeated this. If you are going for video animation then the ND memory needs beefing up. The exact quantity needs to be figured emperically. We are putting 64MB into our ND cubes. Oh, Digital World is another Jonathon Seybold production catering (it appeared) to the entertainment industry (this was in the Beverly Hills Hilton). Our comparisons with the other machinery there favors NeXT for audio-visual work. I noticed that C-Cube had a booth. Their latest literature does not list NeXT as a customer. Hmmmmm. Mark R. Thomsen