Reasonable definition of "Multimedia" 1985-1992

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by 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.

Yes, and this one idea is the one I've been trying to underscore. What were people using at home? I can tell you a lot of people were still getting mileage from their 8088 machines. I knew one guy that sank a fortune into the ill-fated x286. I still chuckle at my friend showing me the computer he was building, and holding up a fan and saying, I quote, "See this? Ya gotta keep the 386 cool, man..."

We still had 8088 computers at work running Lotus for our estimates (a step down from my previous job where we had Mac)and I had friends and family that were still using the Radio Shack color computer and the Tandy 1000. My hobbyist friends at the Commodore computer club I belonged to were just starting to venture into higher-end PCs, like my friend with the fan.

I had one friend who had a Mac and I worked for him for about 2 years. I mentioned what we did with 2 Macs, Appletalk, and a laser printer on a previous post.

Those of us with the Amiga were on average, a step ahead of what anybody else we probably knew were using at home. Amiga (and nominally the Atart ST) for many years were the reigning kings of content.

Good grief...if we can't claim we were doing multimedia before multimedia was cool and long before the home PC market exploded around 1994 or 95 with affordable x486 PCs with Windows 95 and MS Encarta, packaged, and well under the $2,500 price point hobbyists might put into their computers at home, then no one can claim it. We admit we're beaten and multimedia only belonged to the computers around the $10,000 price point, often used specifically for a single purpose.

[spiff]

By saying amiga fits the critera for resonable definition of multimedia, you're setting some baseline we can compare against; say the A500.

• Enough units sold
• Can do animation
• Can do FM sound
• Can store on some media (floppies) or if you had money to burn €600 harddrive
• Can do video toster from 91 and beyond

• Can not edit video fotage, due to storage and cpu speed
• Can not playback video fotage, due to storage and cpu speed

By that definition, the majority of Japan and USA didnt do multimedia from 85->92. That's not my experience considering from where most of what I would say qualifies as multimedia came from.

• If you start to remove some of the qualifications, pretty much any system that can play games will fit.
• If you go by the text book definition, any thing more that 1 medium is multimedia, ie any music video ever created.
• If you go by interactive multimedia, pretty much any system that can play games will fit.

Note, CD32 was released in late 93.

[roondar]

CDTV was designed as a multimedia system and was released in 1991

[roondar]

Originally Posted by spiff

By saying amiga fits the critera for resonable definition of multimedia, you're setting some baseline we can compare against; say the A500.

• Enough units sold
• Can do animation
• Can do FM sound
• Can store on some media (floppies) or if you had money to burn €600 harddrive
• Can do video toster from 91 and beyond

• Can not edit video fotage, due to storage and cpu speed
• Can not playback video fotage, due to storage and cpu speed

By that definition, the majority of Japan and USA didnt do multimedia from 85->92. That's not my experience considering from where most of what I would say qualifies as multimedia came from.

• If you start to remove some of the qualifications, pretty much any system that can play games will fit.
• If you go by the text book definition, any thing more that 1 medium is multimedia, ie any music video ever created.
• If you go by interactive multimedia, pretty much any system that can play games will fit.

Note, CD32 was released in late 93.

I do feel the Amiga 500 fits the minimum definition of a reasonably powerful multimedia system. I've never bought into the "needs CD-ROM" definition (SCALA is certainly a multimedia tool and does not need CD's) and I certainly don't buy the "needs to be able to edit video" definition as that is something that really only became viable on consumer systems around 2002-2005.

After all, it is 100% true that most of Japan and the USA didn't do multimedia from 1985-1992. Including most Amiga users

I just don't feel the higher specs are actually needed to qualify. But in case you do think so, then the Amiga 500 could still qualify - just add a CD drive and it's really extremely close to what the so-called "multimedia PC's" actually offered in terms of multimedia (and not say games and the like).

[spiff]

Originally Posted by roondar

CDTV was designed as a multimedia system and was released in 1991

Laserdisc was designed as a multimedia system and released in 1978
CD drive and higher specs not needed to qualify.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by spiff

By that definition, the majority of Japan and USA didnt do multimedia from 85->92. That's not my experience considering from where most of what I would say qualifies as multimedia came from.

• If you start to remove some of the qualifications, pretty much any system that can play games will fit.
• If you go by the text book definition, any thing more that 1 medium is multimedia, ie any music video ever created.
• If you go by interactive multimedia, pretty much any system that can play games will fit.

Note, CD32 was released in late 93.

When was the ability to play games mentioned as "multimedia?" Multi is multi. The ability to handle multiple formats and do it well. Maybe at that stage you can add games but as I pointed out most people didn't have high-end PCs from 1985-1992 and that can be demonstrated. They were ridiculously expensive, not that an Amiga was cheap. The machines they had could not do what the Amiga could do in terms of graphics, sound, and animation. A Mac couldn't, the Tandy 1000 couldn't and what little it could do didn't touch the Amiga. Most people were still using their 8088 machines if they had them at all.

As mentioned before, the A570 CDROM came out in 1991. Few people were using CDs for anything other than music on the CD Players which were being sold at the time. The other Amigas except perhaps the 1200, could use commercially available CDROM drives.

What PCs during that timeframe could do theoretically I'm not interested in. Merely running games is not multimedia but I would think running a demo on the A500 like 9 FINGERS does in fact, qualify as multimedia because of its content.

[spiff]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

... I would think running a demo on the A500 like 9 FINGERS does in fact, qualify as multimedia because of its content.

So we're back to the C64

• Runs awesome demos
• Multiple formats
• Cheaper than amiga
• Larger install base than amiga

It's just less of everything, maybe not in quality, but in measurable hardware.

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by spiff

It's just less of everything, maybe not in quality, but in measurable hardware.

Sure - but it lacks the accessibility and flexibility.


Yes, you can play back a sound sample on a C64 if you're an expert in assembly language programming, but where was the turnkey accessible-to-the-average-user sampling hardware and software?


Where's the hand-scanner or video digitiser for getting images into the machine?


That was the whole point of the discussion that this one branched from - that the Amiga wasn't the first to have these capabilities, or even the best at doing any of these things. it was the machine that offered a well balanced package of capabilities and made them accessible to the average user - and more to the point, made the average user see that there might actually be some value in them, even for someone not using such capabilities professionally.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by spiff

So we're back to the C64

• Runs awesome demos
• Multiple formats
• Cheaper than amiga
• Larger install base than amiga

It's just less of everything, maybe not in quality, but in measurable hardware.

If that's all you found of note and you're really going to compare C64 demos and Amiga ECS/OCS/AGA demos, then we've parted company and gone our separate ways regarding the history of the Amiga Computer. I doubt there's anything that can convince you. You don't sound very impressed with the Amiga and have no interest in objectively comparing it with what most people could do at home in the late 80s/early 90s.

I think we've established on this and the other thread, that the Amiga more than met the definition of a multimedia computer based on how it was defined at the time, whether you add a CDROM into the mix or not. No, other PCs in the home market could *not* do what the Amiga did no matter how much you insist they could.

[Weaselrama]

This is what home consumers willing to spend some money in 1988 were buying. Found new in the box, a x286 IBM PC AT. I bet it wasn't cheap. I've previously mentioned the dude at work who laid down a whole lot of cash for his x286.

This is not a multimedia computer.

[ Show youtube player ]

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by spiff

So we're back to the C64

• Runs awesome demos
• Multiple formats
• Cheaper than amiga
• Larger install base than amiga

It's just less of everything, maybe not in quality, but in measurable hardware.

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

If that's all you found of note and you're really going to compare C64 demos and Amiga ECS/OCS/AGA demos, then we've parted company and gone our separate ways regarding the history of the Amiga Computer. I doubt there's anything that can convince you. You don't sound very impressed with the Amiga and have no interest in objectively comparing it with what most people could do at home in the late 80s/early 90s.

I think we've established on this and the other thread, that the Amiga more than met the definition of a multimedia computer based on how it was defined at the time, whether you add a CDROM into the mix or not. No, other PCs in the home market could *not* do what the Amiga did no matter how much you insist they could.

Weaselrama, in response to spiff's post, I did post (and then deleted) how so many of the C64's greatest demos, in fact, the Top 250 according to Pouet.net, appear to have been made in the 21st century. Less than 10 were made in the 1990s or before, which is a frankly damning indictment, considering that more often than not, the best-looking C64 demos have no doubt been developed under emulation on powerful PCs and then migrated to C64, with ease. The same could be said for Amiga, but then the Amiga and PC are more comparable in power!

[khph_re]

I dunno, there are degree's of multimedia. Thinking about Spiffs post, I still read C64 disk mags, text, pictures and music playing. I guess that counts as multimedia. And demo's are a form of multimedia.

Turns out the Amiga was video ready though, CDXL is pretty cool. I think it was the first to be the complete package.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by spiff

Laserdisc was designed as a multimedia system and released in 1978
CD drive and higher specs not needed to qualify.

Laserdisc was not designed as a system, but as a video playback system (it's intended use was to replace pre-recorded VHS tapes). That some companies later created multimedia systems that happened to include Laserdiscs is interesting, but it doesn't make Laserdisc itself a system - or even multimedia per se. But, that said I agree - you don't need a CD drive to do multimedia.

I just don't understand what the contention is here: in terms of multimedia as delivered by early "multimedia PC's", the Amiga had specs that are reasonably in line with what these much later systems have (apart from the CD drive you're basically close enough) and did it years earlier. IMHO it's a total no-brainer to call it one of the first "multimedia systems" based on the specs alone. The CDTV version of the Amiga even has a video codec if that's what you feel is needed.

So why not the C64? Well, it's basically a matter of degrees. Technically (as in going by the definition) I'd say it does count. But practically, multimedia requires reaching certain minimum abilities before it becomes truly "viable". This minimum "viable" system simply requires audio/visual/storage abilities that are beyond what systems like the C64 offer, but actually (mostly or fully) in reach of what the Amiga offers. The point then is then further that the Amiga meets that minimum much better than most other consumer systems from the 1980's (while also being one of the earliest to do so).

The fact is that the early multimedia PC's from around 1991/1992 (which I'm assuming we're talking about here) only really improve over the Amiga 500 in fairly minor ways to begin with in terms of actual multimedia applications. They really only meaningfully improve over it in terms of storage (which is easy to add to the Amiga and was actually provided as a handy system as well in the form of the CDTV and as a fairly cheap add-on in the form of the A570).

Just to be clear, I mean this in terms of multimedia applications as actually delivered by these early multimedia PC's - not as a statement about Amiga vs PC specs overall and certainly not about much later multimedia PC's from the late 90's. Though there is a lot to be said about that, I have no desire going down that rabid hole yet again - I'm still not quite recovered from the last 1000 page thread on this issue

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by roondar

I do feel the Amiga 500 fits the minimum definition of a reasonably powerful multimedia system.

Was a bit slow, though; i remember a friend of mine in 1993 did render this animation for the Bit.movie contest using its A500+, imagine 2 and hard disk (80MB) and expansion [and i made the music]; after three days of rendering scanline, the replay of the full screen 320x256 HAM playback (ANIM-7 if i remember) was around 4/6 FPS using Viewtek; a quarter screen 160x120 CDXL would have indeed been more manageable i suppose
[the below video was captured using an A3000 so is faster]

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Weaselrama, in response to spiff's post, I did post (and then deleted) how so many of the C64's greatest demos, in fact, the Top 250 according to Pouet.net, appear to have been made in the 21st century. Less than 10 were made in the 1990s or before, which is a frankly damning indictment, considering that more often than not, the best-looking C64 demos have no doubt been developed under emulation on powerful PCs and then migrated to C64, with ease. The same could be said for Amiga, but then the Amiga and PC are more comparable in power!

I've often considered whether the C64 qualified as a multimedia machine. There was nothing the C64 could do within the definition of multimedia that it could do particularly well. You can't compare the SID to Paula or to Mod music no matter how popular SID might be among enthusiasts. It could barely render a .gif file. If you move into the realm of GeoWorks you could display Mac-like bitmapped graphics. There really was nothing else *but* some impressive demos. It was an 8-bit home computer in the most pejorative sense.

The Amiga had the impressive demos plus a whole lot more. The IBM PC AT I posted earlier was *nominally* a multimedia machine in comparison to the Amiga in 1988 when it was available. It was an expensive machine, it was based on the ill-fated x286, it didn't have the fancy $4,000 add on graphics card that a certain poster on the other thread hangs his hat on and it was at the HIGH-END of what was available to home PC enthusiasts at the time. This is your $2,500 price-point, high-end PC equipment. The x386 didn't debut until 1991. The Amiga smoked them in what it could provide in multimedia content.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Was a bit slow, though; i remember a friend of mine in 1993 did render this animation for the Bit.movie contest using its A500+, imagine 2 and hard disk (80MB) and expansion [and i made the music]; after three days of rendering scanline, the replay of the full screen 320x256 HAM playback (ANIM-7 if i remember) was around 4/6 FPS using Viewtek; a quarter screen 160x120 CDXL would have indeed been more manageable i suppose
[the below video was captured using an A3000 so is faster]

CDXL ran at something like 15FPS on an A500 and was essentially "a bit better and a bit worse" than what PC's did for multimedia CD based animation at the time: basically the same resolution & frame rate, more colours per frame (4096 vs 256), worse colour palette depth (12bit vs 18 bit). It was actually quite impressive for the time, even if the full-screen pixel doubled version was clearly low-res.

PC's didn't commonly do full screen animations like what you're showing there until a few years later (at which point they did usually have fast enough hardware for decent frame rates as well though), most PC games/animations at the time (1990-1992) used "smoke and mirrors" to make it seem the screen was full sized and animating, while really only animating a small section of the screen or dropping the frame rate significantly when larger objects were displayed. The Amiga basically did the same, many animations ran at more respectable frame rates on an A500 by just not animating the entire screen.

[Rotareneg]

Many FMV games ran at half vertical resolution and added blank lines to pad out the image to restore the proper aspect ratio.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by roondar

CDXL ran at something like 15FPS on an A500 and was essentially "a bit better and a bit worse" than what PC's did for multimedia CD based animation at the time: basically the same resolution & frame rate, more colours per frame (4096 vs 256), worse colour palette depth (12bit vs 18 bit). It was actually quite impressive for the time, even if the full-screen pixel doubled version was clearly low-res.

PC's didn't commonly do full screen animations like what you're showing there until a few years later (at which point they did usually have fast enough hardware for decent frame rates as well though), most PC games/animations at the time (1990-1992) used "smoke and mirrors" to make it seem the screen was full sized and animating, while really only animating a small section of the screen or dropping the frame rate significantly when larger objects were displayed. The Amiga basically did the same, many animations ran at more respectable frame rates on an A500 by just not animating the entire screen.

Best performances were obtained with less colors (latter psygnosis intros) and often using advanced delta compressions with limited part of the screen animated - remember one of the coder of Powder working in an animation for a multimedia kiosk that was structured that way

[Seiya]

Refering to first post of this topic, what about multimedia from this?
https://users.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave.Marsh...dia/node8.html

Multimedia software for me is a system of animations, images, text, users must have full interaction with software and easy returning to operating system without reset the machine.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Seiya

Refering to first post of this topic, what about multimedia from this?
https://users.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave.Marsh...dia/node8.html

Multimedia software for me is a system of animations, images, text, users must have full interaction with software and easy returning to operating system without reset the machine.

Excellent reference, thanks. It is missing Alan Kay's "Dynabook," definitely a multimedia computer realized as the Xerox Alto in 1973.