Why CDTV failed?

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

I don’t think in this day and age it would be very comfortable or enjoyable watching a episode of something in CDXL, some are bearable on the CD32 with the faster transfer rate and screen size, on CDTV its less 1/4 screen size and lower fps, unique and stunning for the time of course, not really usable for TV or Films.

Of course, nobody expect Bluray quality , neither DVD quality, neither VHS quality, just wanna see what is the best option.
Majsta did some really good tests many years a go on A600:
[ Show youtube player ]

Is this quality be possible on CDTV?

Btw, yesterday I saw your thread and work on CDTV games compilation. Amazing work! Really great stuff.
I personally don't own CDTV, but I really think it deserves big library of everything.

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Btw the CDTV Nasa disc has got 50mins of CDXL at 10fps in under 500mb for reference.

Yeah.. I saw that ... all I can say - great.
Pity, it wasn't more of that.
I assume... 20-30 quality disks like that, a little bit of marketing, and many families would consider CDTV (even on premiere prices), a "must have" thing at home.

Btw.. do you think it was possible to do this full screen.. but let's say... no 4096 colors.. but much less?

[Amigajay]

You can do similar sure if you play from HDD, i’m talking about streaming from CD, CDTV can only do 150k/s, max 160x100 at 12fps with HAM6.

You can get faster fps with less colours than that but it doesn’t look pretty, also you can’t increase the screen size higher than that on CDTV afaik

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

CDTV can only do 150k/s,

Now.. hold on.. isn't CDTV something like 300-350kb per second?

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Now.. hold on.. isn't CDTV something like 300-350kb per second?

Nope, CD32 is 300k/s

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Nope, CD32 is 300k/s

So CD32 had 2X CD reader?

Ok, giving the transfer of 150kb per second, what is your estimation of quality that we could get on (almost) full screen, if we use.. let's say... 16 or 32 colors?

[Retro1234]

I think you could get good results with 16 coloured dithered but I dont think there anything to do it automatically.

Sega Mega CD was single speed? and Mad Dog was full screen.

Majsta video was in AVI2HV Hamp its not CDXL but similar because of its ease of use lots of people were converting Videos with it I think someone even did a full Star Wars Film.
heres some more

[ Show youtube player ]
[ Show youtube player ]

heres some CDXL using AGABlaster not tried it myself
[ Show youtube player ]

[Retro1234]

has a post been removed?

it would be interesting to know either way if the CDTV could do a game like Mega CD Mad Dog or similar 16 colour video.

from the post removed that suggests not possible with CDXL

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

has a post been removed?

Yes, Amigajay decided to delete his own post.

[chb]

FMV games on the Mega CD usually used some version of the Cinepak codec specially adapted for the hardware. That codec is based on vector quantization, which broadly speaking means you construct your frame from a number of unique blocks (the codebook), which in a simplified form (using 8x8 blocks) is a very good match to the tiled display of the MD. A video stream would then typically contain the new tiles for a frame and a list of tile map entries that have been changed, probably itself being compressed with some traditional packing algorithm like LZ or the like.

Vector quantization was used in a lot of early video codecs (Cinepak, Sorenson, intel Indeo), as it is efficient to decode even on slow systems and also well suited for low color depths, but very time consuming to encode. Also quality is mostly lower than DCT-based codecs like MPEG-1. Still, compression ratio is way higher than with CDXL, which is a much simpler codec.

Could the CDTV use such a codec to achieve full motion video at a descent screen size? I am not sure, it would be much more work for CPU and/or blitter to reconstruct the image than with the tiled display on the MD. Maybe it could work ok with 16 pix wide blocks in 16 colors, which would result in a even lower quality than the 8x8 block size on the MD - and the original Cinepak uses 2x2 and 4x4 blocks.

But I am not aware of any VQ codec specially tailored for the Amiga - apart from some scene demos, e.g. from algorithm (who has done some very interesting work on audio and video VQ on C64 and Amiga but unfortunately seems to be mostly interested to showcase his stuff using ultra low bitrate adult clips).

In the end, it's worth mentioning that video compression was bleeding edge at that point in time - and Commodore had neither the know-how to develop some more advanced codec in-house nor the resources to get someone else to do it for them, like Sega did.

[Rotareneg]

No one mentioned the real reason it failed: It used caddies.

The only thing I remember doing with a CDTV back when they came out was to watch a CD+G disc.

[Retro1234]

As I understand (probably wrong )
The Mega Drive had no choice all images had to be made of Tiles so the Amiga should have an advantage of displaying full Bitmaps instead of splitting images into tiles

I'm pretty sure an Amiga could do a sequence of large IFFs easily but from CD with sound I don't know?

[chb]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

As I understand (probably wrong )

Yes!

Originally Posted by Retro1234

The Mega Drive had no choice all images had to be made of Tiles so the Amiga should have an advantage of displaying full Bitmaps instead of splitting images into tiles

No. It is not an advantage in that case, because for vector quantization codecs you need to split your image in some kind of tiles anyway.

Originally Posted by Retro1234

I'm pretty sure an Amiga could do a sequence of large IFFs easily but from CD with sound I don't know?

One (uncompressed) 320x200 16 color IFF-ILBM -> 32 kB. Single speed CD-ROM is 150 kB/s -> less than 5 frames/s without sound. So you need some compression, IFF-ILBM's run-length compression is too slow and inefficient on typical video material. CDXL does no compression at all AFAIK (apart from HAM if you consider that to be some kind of image compression).

[Retro1234]

the CD32 used CDXL and could out perform the Mega CD - im talking about 16 colour on a single speed drive, also it doesnt have to be Iff it could be Raw images that only update the parts of the screen that chance dramatically.

but its beyond me id love to know Earoks opinion and lay this to rest once and for all, after all he did Time Gal for the CD32,

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

It was also in the infancy of CD based machines that were supposed to be multimedia capable of doing all manner of things, turns out, the market wasn't ready for them,

Yes, this is essentially the reason it failed. It was released in the same year that the Multimedia PC standard was introduced, which was also pretty much a failure.

I was developer for the CDTV, and we were all hyped up on the idea of breaking into the 'consumer' market which promised much higher sales. Multimedia was supposed to be the 'next big thing', but it never really eventuated. I worked for a small company which only managed to produce 1 title (which was not a commercial success). I don't regret doing it though, as it was a great experience even though it ended up being a money sink for me. I do have a few regrets though - having to give the CDTV back when I left the company, and stupidly throwing away the master gold disc when I did a clean out a few years ago!

The CDTV did have some problems that didn't help. It was based on a standard A500 but without the same expansion capabilities, which limited its appeal to Amiga users and developers. Keeping all the A500's I/O ports made it more expensive than it could have been, and the CD caddy was a hassle to use compared to a tray or top loader. However those features now make it more desirable than if it was a cut-down machine with a crappy CD mechanism.

In hindsight it was obviously a mistake, but we should be glad Commodore stuck their necks out rather than just following the money like PC clone manufacturers. CDTV's are now highly desirable, not just for their rarity but for the stylish design, excellent build quality and high compatibility with Amiga computers. And it turned out to be much more expandable than originally intended. While it was - like many of Commodore's projects - a commercial failure, the machine itself was a success. Certainly much better designed and built than Commodore's best seller, the C64.

[Retro1234]

Why Kick 1.3 - Kick 2.x came out the same year ?

Sorry I thought you said you worked on the Design of the CDTV, what Game/Title did you produce?

[d4rk3lf]

Ok, I created my first amiga video file, and played it on both winuae emulated a500, and my real a500 with aca500+
Works perfectly

I'd like to test it now somehow at 150kb speed in emulation, but I am unsure how.
Here's some options I am thinking about;
1) Making emulated hard drive limited speed to 150kb per second, but I don't see option.
2) Making bin or cue, and mount it as a cd drive in winuae. I've tried it, but when I mount it, I don't see anything in the workbench.
3) Making adf version and mount to a floppy with 3 or 4 times faster.. unsure how to create adf file from video file... btw what is amiga floppy speed?

Any help and idea is appreciated.

[Retro1234]

Well Done what are the Dimensions and FPS?

dont know how you could emulate exact CD data transfer speed or if WinUae does it automatically.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Well Done what are the Dimensions and FPS?

dont know how you could emulate exact CD data transfer speed or if WinUae does it automatically.

It's 320x200/15 fps.
I've gone hi quality, as my plan is to go lower if transfer speed of 150 is not enough (cdtv transfer speed)

On my Amiga is really watchable, it's better quality then I expected
I might record video of it later.

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I was developer for the CDTV, and we were all hyped up on the idea of breaking into the 'consumer' market which promised much higher sales. Multimedia was supposed to be the 'next big thing', but it never really eventuated. I worked for a small company which only managed to produce 1 title (which was not a commercial success).

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Sorry I thought you said you worked on the Design of the CDTV, what Game/Title did you produce?

Bruce worked on The Connoisseur Fine Art Collection for the CDTV and then Word Construction Set for Amiga OCS-ECS/CD32 (see HERE for more info.). Hopefully he'll have further insights of his own to share with us in regard to CDTV/CD32 development of these two products.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

It's 320x200/15 fps.
I've gone hi quality, as my plan is to go lower if transfer speed of 150 is not enough (cdtv transfer speed)

On my Amiga is really watchable, it's better quality then I expected
I might record video of it later.

No chance, i already stated that 160x100 at 12fps was the max for 150k/s

With your resolution (and a guess 20khz audio) works out 722k/sec, over twice what the CD32 drive is capable of let alone the CDTV.