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Originally Posted by AmigaHope
CGA actually worked just fine on TVs -- it came with a composite output.
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Not in New Zealand it didn't.
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If your TV didn't have composite input (many didn't at the time) you could plug it in via a VCR. 80-column modes were just a bit hard to read sometimes.
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I had an Amstrad PC-20 (AKA Sinclair PC200) for a while. It's the only PC clone I know of that had PAL composite output, and the display wasn't bad for composite. Wish I had kept it because now they are ultra-rare.
So why did I get rid of it? It was a bit
too IBM compatible. Earlier Amstrad PCs had enhanced CGA that could do 16 color graphics, but they removed that for the PC-20. I eventually put a VGA card and a hard drive it, which worked fine but you couldn't close the lid on full-height cards. And despite having an 8MHz 8086 it still felt a bit sluggish compared to the Amiga.
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What CGA couldn't do is interlaced video, so it wasn't suitable for producing a signal compatible with broadcast television for stuff like titling, etc.
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Yes, and so not suitable for any software that need high resolution (interlace might flicker, but it's better than nothing). It couldn't do overscan or more than 4 colors from 1 of 2 crappy palettes in 320x200 either. To get 16 garish composite colors you had to run the even lower resolution of 160x200, and it only worked in NTSC.
Let's face it - apart from text mode, CGA sucks. But thousands of games have been made for it, and millions of people played them. No Amiga fan would put up with such crap, but PC owners lapped it up. Why? Because they already
had a PC, and they weren't about to buy a better machine (the Amiga) just to play games.