ai065@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Thomas Hill) (05/12/91)
I just got back from North Coast Programming here in Ohio where they have
CDTV on display. All I can say is WOW! The unit was hitched up to your
standard Commodore Amiga monitor and produced a great display (of course). The
sales person said that he was shocked at how good of a picture you get on a TV
set with the thing too. He mentioned that the unit was selling very well so
far and that they are selling them at $7xx.xx (well below $800)! I said that I
heard that the ed discount was asking that much for the machine and he said
that this WAS the normal price! Anybody else out there selling them for this
much at normal price? If this is true across the country we may be in for a
sales blitz. Anyway, on to the machine...
Since most people already know the fine details of the machine I'll only
mention a few small notes here. First, I loved the look of the unit. The way
they placed the power and disk lights on each side of the CD slot is really
cool. The unit looked well made and very professional. The same goes for the
remote controller. I loved the personal RAM card port on the front and how it
has that little eject button. The back of the machine is loaded with ports and
will give people the impression that this thing is very powerful. The looks of
this machine couldn't have been done any better IMHO.
What little software I used was great (they had about seven titles on hand).
The "Welcome disk" was very well done and should make a lot of new customers
feel right at home with the machine. I loved the map program (name escapes me
at this moment). The maps look very clear and the sound (read voices) of both
this and the welcome disk were crystal clear (Small question here- Anybody
know what kind of setup exists for routing sound through the Amiga sound chip
and for routing it directly through the normal CD setup? Can you play music
through the CD hardware and have the Amiga sound chip do something else?). I
wanted to see what the quality of real pictures were on the machine so I went
to the pictures on the world map disk. Hey, if you can tell that this is only
"near photo quality" then you have the eyes of an eagle, because the pictures
I saw looked as detailed and fine as my eyes are going to get. I don't think
Joe Public will be able to tell a difference between CD-I and CDTV as far as
this goes. On a final note, the sales person said that some full motion video
game will be coming this month. Can't wait to see that!
All in all, I think Commodore has a real winner here. This very well could be
the hit of the decade as far as electronics go. If I had some money sitting
around I'd put it right into Commodore stock (like I wanted to when it was
only $7 a share :(). When are they going to start advertising this thing and
where?! Play your cards right on this one Commodore. Advertise..Advertise...
Tom
PS- One more small note. As I mentioned that the photo picture quality I saw
was as good as my eyes were going to get, I can imagine what something like
Dynamic HighRes (4096 colors in highres overscan) would do for the thing. I
hope many developers out there are using something like Macro Paint that
allows you to work in this mode.
--
Why purchase a MAC when an Amiga with the same CPU will run 99% of all
__ MAC software..and FASTER at that?! The same can be said of the IBM and
__/// Atari computers, and I can run those in a window. IBM's greatest sales
\XX/ tool is ignorance on the consumer's part. Only the Amiga! DEVO Anyone?ai065@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Thomas Hill) (05/17/91)
I just got back from North Coast Programming here in Ohio where they have
CDTV on display. All I can say is WOW! The unit was hitched up to your
standard Commodore Amiga monitor and produced a great display (of course). The
sales person said that he was shocked at how good of a picture you get on a TV
set with the thing too. He mentioned that the unit was selling very well so
far and that they are selling them at $7xx.xx (well below $800)! I said that I
heard that the ed discount was asking that much for the machine and he said
that this WAS the normal price! Anybody else out there selling them for this
much at normal price? If this is true across the country we may be in for a
sales blitz. Anyway, on to the machine...
Since most people already know the fine details of the machine I'll only
mention a few small notes here. First, I loved the look of the unit. The way
they placed the power and disk lights on each side of the CD slot is really
cool. The unit looked well made and very professional. The same goes for the
remote controller. I loved the personal RAM card port on the front and how it
has that little eject button. The back of the machine is loaded with ports and
will give people the impression that this thing is very powerful. The looks of
this machine couldn't have been done any better IMHO.
What little software I used was great (they had about seven titles on hand).
The "Welcome disk" was very well done and should make a lot of new customers
feel right at home with the machine. I loved the map program (name escapes me
at this moment). The maps look very clear and the sound (read voices) of both
this and the Welcome disk were crystal clear (Small question here- Anybody
know what kind of setup exists for routing sound through the Amiga sound chip
and for routing it directly through the normal CD setup? Can you play music
through the CD hardware and have the Amiga sound chip do something else?). I
wanted to see what the quality of real pictures were on the machine so I went
to the pictures on the world map disk. Hey, if you can tell that this is only
"near photo quality" then you have the eyes of an eagle, because the pictures
I saw looked as detailed and fine as my eyes are going to get. I don't think
Joe Public will be able to tell a difference between CD-I and CDTV as far as
this goes. On a final note, the sales person said that some full motion video
game will be coming this month. Can't wait to see that!
All in all, I think Commodore has a real winner here. This very well could be
the hit of the decade as far as electronics go. If I had some money sitting
around I'd put it right into Commodore stock (like I wanted to when it was
only $7 a share :(). When are they going to start advertising this thing and
where?! Play your cards right on this one Commodore. Advertise..Advertise...
Tom
PS- One more small note. As I mentioned that the photo picture quality I saw
was as good as my eyes were going to get, I can imagine what something like
Dynamic HighRes (4096 colors in highres overscan) would do for the thing. I
hope many developers out there are using something like Macro Paint that
allows you to work in this mode.
--
Why purchase a MAC when an Amiga with the same CPU will run 99% of all
__ MAC software..and FASTER at that?! The same can be said of the IBM and
__/// Atari computers, and I can run those in a window. IBM's greatest sales
\XX/ tool is ignorance on the consumer's part. Only the Amiga! DEVO Anyone?