CompuServe Messages

Steve, Pardon me for jumping in, but I saw the Toaster demo'ed at the World of Amiga show in NY, so I can give you some idea of what it's supposed to be all about. First of all it's a four-input SEG (all composite, unfortunately, no S-video). It's a dual frame store. (so that makes the SEG six inputs, two of which are freeze frames). The frame store can store and retrieve freezes from your hard disk. It's a single-channel DVE with some attractive features like digital trails. One limitation to note here is that although the moving effects look nice, it does its image compression by trimming pixels out of the image. So you couldn't use it to create an over-the-shoulder box for a newscast, as the image would look like he ** ….. But flips an tumbles on and offscreen are nicely executed, and in that respect the Toaster really shines. It's also a character generator, supposedly with full 24-bit resolution. They supply fonts and a utility that lets you make your own. Finally, all of what it can do is software-based, since essentially the board provides the capability, on a pixel-by-pixel basis, to determine which of the four inputs appears where onscreen. So new software will mean new capabilities. Hope this gives you some of the answers you were looking for… Pete