The Dream Machine....

[Paulthetall]

Yeah, in a time of tons of projects, and innovations, what would be the ultimate Amiga Machine would be so freaking awesome if produced....dreaming....

My dream machine....

A CDTV II like machine (without caddies) with internal disk drive (but with further the look as the CDTV 1 (buttons and cool display (with that part there are some possibilities what can be talked about) including wireless controller support (Doesn't matter if infra red/Bluetooth or whatever. an internal SSD/CF, with most importantly AGA chipset! external Keyboard option (just as CDTV 2). So the CDTV 2 alone comes very close, but then with AGA support and should be easy expandable.

What do you think?

[stevelord]

Looks pretty but I'm not sure you'd get the expandability you'd want from it. If it were designed from scratch with an 030/50, 128Mb and IDE that'd probably be a very nice little machine indeed.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Paulthetall

My dream machine....

Absolutely!

THIS instead of the A1200
Maybe even a little bit slimmer....

I could also imagine this case in white or creme...

[Gorf]

Fitting keyboard:

[Weasel Fierce]

I like the hi-fi vibe

[ImmortalA1000]

An AGA CDTV look-a-like would have been much nicer than the ugly/dirt cheap looking 'toilet seat' CD32 in cat poo brown with dime store build quality.

I do like the CDTV, probably why I have 3 multimedia models lol

[Gzegzolka]

I likes games on CD32, but when it comes to design I like CDtv more. It is all another "what if" scenario. Just as You say it looks more like hi-fi system, something of high quaality, while cd32 looks like cheap and poor clone of megadrive. I wish to see same quality in cd32 too, better shiny dark plastic case, better quality of plastic, better buttons in pad.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

An AGA CDTV look-a-like would have been much nicer than the ugly/dirt cheap looking 'toilet seat' CD32 in cat poo brown with dime store build quality.

I do like the CDTV, probably why I have 3 multimedia models lol

There’s a reason why the CD32 is a couple of steps down from CDTV in build quality. CDTV was far too expansive at launch to get into the mainstream. Hardware wise it was an A500+CD in 1991, a year after the A3000 came along. So it should really have been cheaper. But apparently the story goes, it was designed by a ”special products” team that had no experience with cost effective design. So obviouly Commodore learned something from that and even scrapped the CDTV-II (aka CDTV-CR as in Cost Reduced) which really would have been too late to the party and focused on a mainstream product based on the A1200 architecture, and price wise targeted at the mainstream market. Something had to give…. but cat-poo brown? Pretty sure its just grey ;-)

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Fitting keyboard:

Not sure if it matters, but the attachment isn't visible.

[Gorf]

Thank you - repaired!

[Pyromania]

A CDTV remake sounds cool but it better have UHD Blu-ray, CD-ROM is super obsolete.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

A CDTV remake sounds cool but it better have UHD Blu-ray, CD-ROM is super obsolete.

True … but on the other hand: aren’t Blu-rays also obsolete by now?
Maybe this format will become reality soon:
https://foliophotonics.com/technology
(10 TB per disk)

(I could probably store all my old optical media on one of these …)

[Paulthetall]

Agree with blue ray. As long it has backwards compatibility for CD/DVD and if your mentioned thing comes out we can always replace blue-ray with that

[Paulthetall]

Maybe someone/developer can do a project about it? Do I hear a "Stephen Jones" kinda project where people can build in an A1200 into a CDTV kinda case? Would be awesome! I would at least support such a project on the spot!

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Paulthetall

Agree with blue ray. As long it has backwards compatibility for CD/DVD and if your mentioned thing comes out we can always replace blue-ray with that

I am sure this drive will be out before our dream machine - even if it never comes out

[stevelord]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Hardware wise it was an A500+CD in 1991, a year after the A3000 came along.

I can see how people might interpret the idea that the CDTV was like an A500 with A570 because of the obvious compatibilities, but they are very different under the hood. The CDTV design has as much in common with the A500 as it does the 2000.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

There’s a reason why the CD32 is a couple of steps down from CDTV in build quality.

But despite being lower quality product (or rather different target) CD32 offered higher quality CD Audio when compared to more HiFi looking CDTV.

IMHO CDTV is a bit randomly glued system where CD32 is reasonable well designed - difference is enclosure - but internally CD32 is better than CDTV.

[jizmo]

Would've been a nice format factor in 1992, especially if coupled with a hardware chip for playing back FMV or mpeg2 content. But the end result and the look of it also might have easily confused the consumers and computer users alike, like the original CDTV did.

As a side note, I would have always preferred something in the slim boxed form with external keyboard so that the monitor could just rest on the case – similar to A1000 or Mega ST, as the A2000 and A3000 cases always seemed too bulky. Something about this size (in black) with a CD-drive would've been much more to my liking.

[Paulthetall]

So....in order words a CD32 Motherbord in a CDTV2 case and we have our cool machine

[Daedalus]

I built something like this myself years ago from an old CD player and an A1200. Fitted a standard CD-ROM drive, replaced the original front screen with an LCD and built hardware to allow it to read the front panel buttons and a remote control. Can play MP3s (via a MAS player) and CDs, with a PCMCIA card it can import MP3s from a CF card or via Wifi, and can optionally take standard Amiga keyboards and mice. Booting while holding down a mouse button lets it boot into Workbench instead of the custom software for a nice WHDLoad-type setup.

Case isn't the prettiest (I was quick 'n' dirty with the hacking), but it works