keithh@bwdls40.bnr.ca (Keith Hanlan) (01/08/91)
excerpted without permission from: Globe and Mail, 91/1/7, page B1: Multimedia coming home byline: Geoffrey Rowan, Technology Reporter. [...] Multimedia is the next logical step in the evolution of personal computing. It is the marriage of the PC's traditional text and graphics capabilities with video and audio. [...] Even though it has been around for about five years, multimedia is still very much a concept of the future. But with the unqualified support of the companies that drive the computer industry - IBM, Apple, Intel, and Microsoft - it seems certain to blossom. The pioneer in multimedia has been Commodore International Ltd. of the Bahamas, which essentially created the idea in 1985 with the introduction of its Amiga personal computer. Since then IBM and Apple have embraced the notion, adding audio and video capabilities to their machines. Workstation manufacturers such as Sun ... and NeXT ... are also promoting a multimedia world. Having launched the multimedia segment of personal computing, Commodore has recently redefined it with the introduction of a product it calls CDTV - Commodore Dynamic Total Vision. CDTV is more like a stereo component than a home computer. It is a combination compact disc player and Amiga computer, but it has no keyboard. It is controlled by a remote control device, like a TV remote control. 'It provides capabilities far beyond any currently available entertainment or computer system,' said Tom Shepherd, director of marketing for Commodore Business Machines Ltd. of Agincourt, Ont. With CDTV, a user can quickly pull up audio, video, graphics, and text from an electronic encyclopedia or from other resource materials that Commodore says will be developed. The CDTV is being launched in early 1991 for less than $1,500 in Canada, the company said. Initially there will be about 35 programs available for it, Mr. Shepherd said, with plans to expand that number. The disc will cost between $30 and $100. 'We do not think of CDTV programs as software,' he said. It's an electronic interactive, instantaneously accessible library with fiction, non-fiction, reference and entertainment titles. But because there is relatively little resource material commercially available for multimedia, and because there isn't a broad set of industry standards to govern how multimedia products will work together, no one is predicting that every desktop computer will become an interactive multimedia workstation in the near future. Michael Holman, president of Microsoft, said the industry has to agree to standard protocols and hardware prices must come down for multimedia to really take off. But 'we continue to be evangelists for it.' The Globe and Mail is Canada's self-proclaimed National Newspaper.