Reasonable definition of "Multimedia" 1985-1992

[gimbal]

You're right but moving it now would be too soon IMO. It'll take a year of inactivity to get pruned, no hurry.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by roondar

A minor note perhaps, but perhaps this thread ought to be moved out of off-topic. It'll eventually be removed if it stays here and becomes inactive and I think it's actually an interesting thread, so that would be a shame.

---
Did a bit more digging on the term and it turns out it's a much older idea than I thought. Apparently it was first used in the 1960's to describe the combination of video, text and audio.

Mod Lilagurl addressed this in the other thread and I think she's going to move it to Nostalgia.

I've noted - also on the other thread, that Dr. Doug Engelbart's 1968 demo of the Stanford NLS system at the Joint Fall Computer conference in San Francisco, the "Mother of all Demos" is referred to as a multimedia event. He used video overlays of himself and the team back at Stanford (via microwave) on top of the hypertext system he was demonstrating utilizing a keyboard, mouse, and 5-key chord-set on the largest TV screen available, rented from the US Air Force.

[roondar]

That's so cool, they really had a lot of these ideas way before the technology had caught up to make it feasible for wider use. Once more I'm adding something to the list of "evidence it's best to not underestimate ICT pioneers and what they achieved"

[Anubis]

Originally Posted by gimbal

You're right but moving it now would be too soon IMO. It'll take a year of inactivity to get pruned, no hurry.

I thought that purge happens much faster... can't remember each subforums settings, but I am sure it is less than a year.

As for Multimedia, I remember reading ads with multimedia computers back in 80s... so yes, it is earlier idea, but probably much different from what it means today... something like home entertainment center today...

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by roondar

That's so cool, they really had a lot of these ideas way before the technology had caught up to make it feasible for wider use. Once more I'm adding something to the list of "evidence it's best to not underestimate ICT pioneers and what they achieved"

Absolutely. The Amiga more than met even the ideal definition of the era of a multimedia computer.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

Absolutely. The Amiga more than met even the ideal definition of the era of a multimedia computer.

Not really. Like we said earlier the real, practical computer definition relates to the CDROM era. So maybe you could count CDTV in, but the pre-90s Amiga was "just" the best sfx/gfx home machine.I wouldn't call it a multimedia one - otherwise all other micros also qualify.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Not really. Like we said earlier the real, practical computer definition relates to the CDROM era. So maybe you could count CDTV in, but the pre-90s Amiga was "just" the best sfx/gfx home machine.I wouldn't call it a multimedia one - otherwise all other micros also qualify.

We did cover this earlier. We're talking 1985 - 1992 and allowing for a little bit of software development to catch up with the possibilities of the machine. The A500 got the A570 CDROM in what, 1990? Other CDROM drives likely were compatible with the A3000 and A4000, if not other models.

However, we've also established that the CDROM as a multimedia device never really caught on. From the definition of multimedia up until 1985, yes, it was a multimedia computer - pictures, graphics, and sound. I don't see the point in bringing in a delimiter like CDROM when it came and went so quickly.

On the other thread, most home PCs of that same time frame weren't focused on multimedia and didn't deliver much. When I had my Amiga my sister's family had the Tandy 1000. They had no idea how to view graphics and certainly not photos, so other than games and a lame paint program for DOS. Otherwise, they ran Wordperfect for DOS and a spreadsheet. The games they had provided the only "music" that came out of that computer.

I guess we probably should merge the two threads.

[Galahad/FLT]

Bit of conflation here about CD-ROM.

CD-ROM simply enabled multimedia presentations to be bigger and bolder for a cheaper storage medium, but multimedia existed before CD-ROM, it was generally of a much smaller size because of the constraints of the medium it was expected to play on.

But for sure multimedia presentations existed long before CD-ROM was adopted, and the Amiga was right there when it happened.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Bit of conflation here about CD-ROM.

CD-ROM simply enabled multimedia presentations to be bigger and bolder for a cheaper storage medium, but multimedia existed before CD-ROM, it was generally of a much smaller size because of the constraints of the medium it was expected to play on.

But for sure multimedia presentations existed long before CD-ROM was adopted, and the Amiga was right there when it happened.

Absolutely agree. Ok, so the World Wide Web wasn't cheaper as I said earlier - especially for the content provider, but it really did supersede and make obsolete, multimedia on CDROM such as MS Encarta and many other titles. I seem to recall the year I started my IT career, 1997, after 17 years as a construction estimator, the "Web" as we still called it was rocking with music and video and it wasn't soon after the "Web" became synonymous with "The Internet." Just a few years before I had a 2,800 baud modem and a Unix Shell account.

A "reasonable" definition of multimedia during 1985 - 1992 shouldn't need to include CDROM and if it must in the minds and opinions of some of us, we're still covered.

[Foebane]

I remember scouring through pages and pages of any PC magazine from around 1994-95 and there were HUNDREDS of different PC systems in adverts classifying themselves as "Multimedia PC", and they ALL had CD-ROM drives. So, I assumed, as everyone else would, that a CD-ROM drive was necessary to qualify for such a moniker. I never dreamed otherwise.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I remember scouring through pages and pages of any PC magazine from around 1994-95 and there were HUNDREDS of different PC systems in adverts classifying themselves as "Multimedia PC", and they ALL had CD-ROM drives. So, I assumed, as everyone else would, that a CD-ROM drive was necessary to qualify for such a moniker. I never dreamed otherwise.

Interestingly, I can remember doing the same thing, pouring over magazines in the 1980 - 85 timeframe and multimedia was described w/o the CDROM reference. I will say the advent of the CDROM drive was big news. But a Tandy 1000 in 1990 could make no use of a CDROM drive, not with the monitor and graphics card my sister's had.

I read computer mags voraciously. My first computer in 1980 was a Radio Shack TRS-80 and I progressed to the Commodore 64 (just after the Amiga debuted) and then I got the Amiga 1000 in 1990 or 91. It was dazzling.

It seems unfair to force the CDROM into the defintion given the timeframe. On the other hand, it became available to the Amiga early on.

[robinsonb5]

"Multimedia PC" was a marketing label applied to PCs just to make it easier to know whether a given machine would be able to run a given title - rather then checking a laundry-list of specifications. So yes, any PC marketed as a Multimedia PC will have had a CD-ROM drive. But the term Multimedia had been in use long before then and the software produced by what subsequently became Scala was undeniably part of the multimedia sphere.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

From the definition of multimedia up until 1985, yes, it was a multimedia computer - pictures, graphics, and sound. I don't see the point in bringing in a delimiter like CDROM when it came and went so quickly.

Ok, so going by that definition Amiga was a multimedia computer. But I could watch demos involving pictures, "video" and sound on my C64 too (no matter how primitive they were), and all the other micros. I could make a "presentation" with one, should I want to. So they were also multimedia computers and it does not make Amiga particularly special, which I presume was the point of this thread (born from that other argument started by Vascolicious).

My point is that going by generic definition it becomes kind of useless. I'm sure there were some multimedia presentations right back when Lumiere brothers first started too. I was in the supermarket yesterday and saw multimedia speakers. There are multimedia art shows happening everywhere all the time. And so on and on.

But we're talking retro computing, and in this context "multimedia" became a meaningful term with the advent of CD-ROM, the glut of "interactive" programs and the industry hype train accompanying it.

[khph_re]

To me there's a threshold for multimedia, the playback of speech and music as samples, the display of video and graphics to a convincing standard, with the storage to match.

I think the Amiga was the first home system that met most of these criteria, and with the CDTV/A570 storage, all of them.


I guess a VGA pc with soundblaster 1 (I believe it could just about play samples?) and CD-ROM would also count.

[grond]

The term "multimedia" is probably similar to "pr0nography": I can't define it but I know it when I see it...

Speaking of this, perhaps the use of a computer for pr0nography makes it a multimedia computer...

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by khph_re

I guess a VGA pc with soundblaster 1 (I believe it could just about play samples?) and CD-ROM would also count.

Certainly. After 1994 the PC quickly surpassed the Amiga in its ability to deliver a multimedia experience. I don't think that's in contention.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

Certainly. After 1994 the PC quickly surpassed the Amiga in its ability to deliver a multimedia experience. I don't think that's in contention.

What's in contention is if it was able to do so from 1985-1991(CDTV launch). And that boils down to one's definition of mutimedia in this context.

[robinsonb5]

Delivering an experience and delivering a smooth, fluid, stutter-free experience are two different things. Before the early 90s a PC was much less likely to be able to do the latter than an Amiga.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

What's in contention is if it was able to do so from 1985-1991(CDTV launch). And that boils down to one's definition of mutimedia in this context.

Well at this point I'd have to conclude that there isn't one "reasonable" definition of "multimedia" but two. That which includes CDROM media and one that does not.

I would call this being at an impasse.

[dreadnought]

Fair enough. In that case I will just quote myself...

For me it's enough to say that Amiga was the best home computer in regard to AV capabilities during the ~1986~1991 period.

...and won't split this hair any further