Why CDTV failed?

[d4rk3lf]

Ok, here it is:

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Now, not sure why my phone recorded with so many artifact, usually it records much better videos... but anyway, it's good enough.
I can upload video file, if anyone wants to view it from Amiga.

It is totally watchable, audio and video sync is great, there is some artifact here and there, but nothing distracting.
My girlfriend was amazed when she saw A500 plays video.

Originally Posted by Amigajay

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.

Yeah, that's ok.
The plan is that I reduce everything, but first, I need to find a way to make transfer equal to CDTV in Winuae.
Any suggestions?

After all, I don't own CDTV, and I am happy that it plays on my A500.
So, CDTV with Hard Drive could easely plays it too.

Cheers!

[jotd]

It's sure impressive. But isn't that playing from hard drive? CD 1x speed is much much slower than hard drives. Even old ones.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by jotd

It's sure impressive. But isn't that playing from hard drive? CD 1x speed is much much slower than hard drives. Even old ones.

I wrote several times Yeah, I am aware of that.
Trying to figure out how to make winuae transfer of 150kb/s (witch is pretty much same as CDTV).
Then I'll see how this play...

And then I'll try converting in smaller res, maybe in 10fps, not sure though how can I convert to less colors.

[fxgogo]

It was a product looking for a market. I remember seeing it at the user group meetings and it’s primary purpose was to distribute pd software to the users.

It was not alone as a failed product. The CDi and the 3DO were similar products that failed in the market.

[005AGIMA]

Let me prefix what I'm about to say with the fact that I NOW think the CDTV was way ahead of it's time especially in terms of presentation. It took a geek device and made it a desirable box that would look in place in any loungeroom of the period. It would have gained from being more than an A500 in a pretty box perhaps? But that aside......

I played on one in Megabytes, our go-to Computer shop at the time.

We played that rather strange full motion video game with the murderer in the woods.

Sure it had FMV and sampled audio...but the FMV wasn't even close to full colour and the "interaction" was minimal at best.

So why did the CDTV fail?

Well....and this is fairly brutal.....perhaps it failed because....it was crap?

I never saw anything that made me "want" one.

That's the thing every new system needs. A title or demo that makes you go "I NEED that in my life!"

[Amigajay]

I don’t think saying the CDTV was crap is entirely fair, after all its based on its best selling A500 computer.

And yes most On-line games were crap but thats not the CDTV’s fault, purely the developers, but if Commodore marketed it better and got more 3rd party support than the games would have obviously improved.

But then it wasn’t meant to be for A500 or Amiga owners, the price of it (and CD-i) was the high end Hi-Fi consumer market, to have a stackable system that plugs into your Hi-Fi and TV that could play various discs (and the odd game).

Don’t forget there was no Internet then, encyclopaedias were boring to look in and unless you won a TV quiz show you had to go the library to find out some information, i would imagine it was pretty amazing to have all that information on one disc at the time, along with photos, music etc

The proof these types discs still continued until the early 2000s proved were they both popular and useful and the term ‘multimedia’ took off (mainly on the PC because of numbers and it was on a system you used for everything else).

I guess the main reason they failed is not what they could do, but more people weren't prepared to pay a high price for something that was limited to just these types of discs, CD-i faired better because it had FMV support along with Philips blowing $1billion dollars advertising and paying developers/studios to support the machine.

IF Commodore didn’t fudge around with the A570 and got it out at the same time as the CDTV in early 1991 instead of late 1992 to build support on the games side and build a bigger user base then it could have been a slightly different story, not saying it would have saved Commodore, but the range of CDTV games would have been much bigger.

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

I wrote several times Yeah, I am aware of that.
Trying to figure out how to make winuae transfer of 150kb/s (witch is pretty much same as CDTV).
Then I'll see how this play...

And then I'll try converting in smaller res, maybe in 10fps, not sure though how can I convert to less colors.

Ha , Surprised you like your BBC stuff so much being from Serbia

So what's the exact Time Length and File size so far?

I never got good results with CDXL and can't even remember how you do it I went over to AV2HV hamp it was so easy. Do you have to split it into individual frames etc.

Can you decreases it to 16colour ?

Maybe try creating an ISO with the CD32 Dec Kit and then using WinUae QuickStarts CDTV.

Even if it's not perfect it would give an idea of where to go from there

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Ha , Surprised you like your BBC stuff so much being from Serbia

Why?
In Serbia, Only Fools and Horses, is very very popular, all the time, and I am no exception. Also some other shows like Allo Allo, Man Behave Badly, etc.
I personally like Blackadder the most.
Some other form of art from UK is also very popular here... Tolkien, for example... I don't know... Iron Maiden too.

Originally Posted by Retro1234

So what's the exact Time Length and File size so far?

It's pretty big so far, and I definitely need to reduce quality, even if (hypothetically) this work nicely on CD speed (which is impossible), because size is too big.
It's 1:18 minute - 60MB

So, for a 650MB this quality, it would be roughly 12-13 minutes of video.

Originally Posted by Retro1234

I never got good results with CDXL and can't even remember how you do it I went over to AV2HV hamp it was so easy. Do you have to split it into individual frames etc.

This is not CDXL, as I still have no idea (nor tried) how to create one.
It's exactly, like you said, created with AV2HV app.
I first exported Raw Avi and Wav from (mp4) in After Effects, then I converted that Avi in Virtual Dub, by the specifications in AV2HV read-me file.
And lastly , I installed ViewHam app in workbech, so I can view it from Amiga.

Since, I never did anything similar, I was happy it worked at all.

Now will try to see how I can convert it in CDXL format (any app recommendation? ), and will try limiting speed in Winuae.
Maybe we can ask Tony, if there's a hack to force virtual HD Drive to be maximum speed as 1x CD rom drive.

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Can you decreases it to 16colour ?

Probably, but have no idea how to do that.
After Effects doesn't give me that option, and I haven't see that in Virtual Dub also.
The only way I can think of, is converting everything to images, then making action in photoshop, to reduce it to 16 colors, and save as IFF images... but that would be insane... and also, if I would create avi from that, I don't think avi would keep information of 16 colors.

I hope there is some app (on PC) that can do that.

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Maybe try creating an ISO with the CD32 Dec Kit and then using WinUae QuickStarts CDTV.

Thanks for the suggestion.
If this work, one less thing to worry about.

[Seiya]

I think CDTV has had great fortune because there are many titles, not only games, that show Amiga quality in every genre. Multimedia product for example are very well done with a friendly interface easy and very suitable for any age. Maybe they could better exploited the cd-rom room for more videos and animations in multimedia products. I like CDTV prodcutions.

Lucas Arts wanted to port their games on Amiga AGA so they ask to Commodore to release A1200. In the USA the market was only PC DOS while in Europe they wanted to win thank to Amiga, but Commodore had not intention to release A1200 because their lived on Amiga 500 success. LucasArts decide after a time to not have any relationship with Commodore. Later when Commodore release CD32 they ask to Lucas to port "Rebel Assault", but Luacs thought that Commodore was a Company fated to bankrupty in the brief future and they didn't intention to support that incompetent Company.
LucasArts really want base their games in Europe on Amiga AGA like Indy 4 and all the games for the future, but Commodore maybe at the time was like blind to Amiga Future.

[Gorf]

in the same year the CDTV appeared the "DCTV" extension for the amiga was released.
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/dctv

Capable of video-playback in millions of colors via the RGB-port.

Commodore should have bought the whole company and put that amazing technology in the CDTV by default. That would have been an incredible machine and would have sold even at the high price Commodore wanted initially.

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[Retro1234]

@d4rk3lf Strangely Iron Maiden, Def Leppard etc aren't really know in the UK not like other bands there more export.


Ok for CDXL have a look here https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic=8229.0

also it seems the image can be stretched Vertical

Originally Posted by gary

It is in "the zone".
It has been awhile since I created some CDXLs.
From memory the best result I could achieve was to use XLMake to create a CDXL with frames that were shrunk to half-height (eg: 320x170) then to use cdgsxl with the SDBL option to 'stretch' the scanlines for a (nearly) full screen display (eg: 320x240).

but AGABlaster can do it as-well - so have a look in the AGABlaster Thread and maybe movec will come back with some ideas.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

also it seems the image can be stretched Vertical


but AGABlaster can do it as-well - so have a look in the AGABlaster Thread and maybe movec will come back with some ideas.

Yes it doubles the vertical pixel resolution (in size only not real resolution) but its only for AGA, CDTV can’t do it.

[Retro1234]

theres load of CDXL stuff here https://amigaanimecd.wordpress.com/tag/cdxl/page/8/

also Cobe knows alot on the subject and is from Serbia so might be worth asking him.

Seems Rebel-CD32 had the same idea of creating a larger Resolution and smaller file size using 16 colour not HAM dont know if he ever did anything.

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Yes it doubles the vertical pixel resolution (in size only not real resolution) but its only for AGA, CDTV can’t do it.

im not saying your wrong but I cant find any reference to this being AGA only ?

[chb]

Originally Posted by Gorf

in the same year the CDTV appeared the "DCTV" extension for the amiga was released.
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/dctv

Capable of video-playback in millions of colors via the RGB-port.

Commodore should have bought the whole company and put that amazing technology in the CDTV by default. That would have been an incredible machine and would have sold even at the high price Commodore wanted initially.

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They produced a DCTV card for the CDTV (never sold officially, AFAIK) - the CDTV has a video slot, so I guess something like that was planed from quite early on (It would possibly have been called Advanced Video Mode card):
https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.c...ct.aspx?id=283

In the CDXL format, there was already a flag for DCTV: http://www.cd32-allianz.de/cdxl/v1?

DCTV is a quite clever encoding scheme, AFAIK a block of 4x2 4-bit pixels is converted to 4 luminance values and 2 chroma values, each in 8 bit. So luma resolution is half the display res and chroma 1/4, very useful for video.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

theres load of CDXL stuff here https://amigaanimecd.wordpress.com/tag/cdxl/page/8/

also Cobe knows alot on the subject and is from Serbia so might be worth asking him.

Seems Rebel-CD32 had the same idea of creating a larger Resolution and smaller file size using 16 colour not HAM dont know if he ever did anything.



im not saying your wrong but I cant find any reference to this being AGA only ?

Was mentioned in the CDXL PDF Amiga Anime did, would be in the CD32 Toolkit somewhere too, sure it only works with HAM8 too.

You can easily test it yourself (i have, just to confirm!) as its a command line parameter used when asking system to play a video ‘sdbl’ just make the vertical pixels of the video you convert is max 128 so it can double within screen limits.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by chb

They produced a DCTV card for the CDTV (never sold officially, AFAIK) - the CDTV has a video slot, so I guess something like that was planed from quite early on (It would possibly have been called Advanced Video Mode card):
https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.c...ct.aspx?id=283

In the CDXL format, there was already a flag for DCTV: http://www.cd32-allianz.de/cdxl/v1?

DCTV is a quite clever encoding scheme, AFAIK a block of 4x2 4-bit pixels is converted to 4 luminance values and 2 chroma values, each in 8 bit. So luma resolution is half the display res and chroma 1/4, very useful for video.

Did not known about that card.
So my idea seems valid ... just 30 years late.

They would have probably needed to make some adjustments to the resolution and maybe do some clever p-frame or b-frame tricks to get video working at single speed ... but nevertheless I would call it a missed chance.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Did not known put that card.
So my idea seems valid ... just 30 years late.

They would have probably needed to make some adjustments to the resolution and maybe do some clever p-frame or b-frame tricks to get video working at single speed ... but nevertheless I would call it a missed chance.

The AVM card was already mentioned and detailed in the CDTV developers manual long before the CDTV came out, does make you wonder they released a high end unit without it, esp when the CDTV couldn’t play Photo CDs without it.

Does make you appreciate the internal workings of a FMV card, to get full screen 24fps video on a single speed drive (CD-i) is pretty incredible!

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Was mentioned in the CDXL PDF Amiga Anime did, would be in the CD32 Toolkit somewhere too, sure it only works with HAM8 too.

You can easily test it yourself (i have, just to confirm!) as its a command line parameter used when asking system to play a video ‘sdbl’ just make the vertical pixels of the video you convert is max 128 so it can double within screen limits.

Just this minute seen it in the CD32 Developers notes

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

CD-I might have been a commercial failure but it had a better library than the CDTV and for a while every Tech Store you went in had one on display and was an object of Curiosity.

iirc Tomorrows World did a peace on the CD-I and a small mention of the CDTV

its hard to see where the CDTV would fit in? where was it aimed at? it had a CD drive but was under powered.

It's important to remember here that CD-i was incredibly similar hardware-wise to the CDTV. It had better FMV on a higher-color display but no blitter/copper/sprites/etc. but in the end their capabilities were about on par.

Philips pushed VERY VERY hard and yet the CD-i still failed. If you look at the the other entrant to the market (Tandy Video Information System), it failed even worse than the CDTV.

These products were underpowered for the purposes they were meant to be used for -- multimedia infotainment systems. Interfaces were slow and clunky and pulling up information took up time -- if it was there at all.

There IS a use case for this but it's not fun to use with a dpad on an NTSC/PAL TV off a CD-ROM that had to be preloaded with what you might want. The killer app that made this use case work was the internet/WWW on a desktop computer with better-than PAL/NTSC display and using a mouse, and later tablets/phones with touchscreens.

[redblade]

I’ve only seen one CD encyclopaedia and that was encarta 95. I don’t know what the cdtv one was like but it would be hard to compete with a budget that Microsoft had. If they made high quality educational titles that were bundled with it they could have sold to schools