CompuServe Messages

"…but you can't get AGA to tape so easy." Huh? All you have to do is add an encoder like the A520 ($35 street price) and tape with mode promotion off. Plus existing genlocks will work with AGA (as opposed to _no_ genlocks with DCTV). With my GVP GLock and AGA, I can genlock or chromakey DCTV quality AGA images _with_ video, and animate them very quickly. In hires, the image gets much better than DCTV quality. As for a new 'higher-res' composite DCTV output from the AGA modes, the chances of that happening are almost nil. Consider that AGA already does HAM8 at 1280×400 and that is considered the 'ultimate' resolution for NTSC/broadcast… it is also about twice the res of the Toaster. People contemplating the utility of using DCTV with AGA modes should just forget it. DCTV was derrived as a way to exploit the Denise's highest bandwidth (4 bitplane hires), because no lores/hicolor mode (8 bitplane lowres) with the same bandwidth was supported. Denise (ECS) could have done this if it just _allowed_ you to use that mode, resulting in perhaps 256 out of 4096 colors (low res) or a new HAM mode allowing all 4096 colors with _no_ fringing; Going a bit further by adding a larger palette would make this fantasy Denise chip a close cousin to AGA. But Commodore took a bigger leap than that, so we went right from old ECS to AGA today. And AGA, unlike ECS, permits full color depth at any standard resolution… thus no non-HAM high-bandwidth resolutions for DCTV to exploit. -Chris