CompuServe Messages

Martin, I went down to Sears today, and looked at Phillips CD-I for a good long time. Played with 'Treasures of the Smithsonian', 'Time-Life Photography', 'Palm Springs Open' and 'Vincent Van Gogh' discs. Also listened/watched a CD+Graphics disc, so yes it can do that. Can certainly quibble with the discs quality, etc, but overall I found them superior to the CDTV discs I have used (ducking). Very subjective and very small sample, I'll admit. I picked up three brochures. One advertising 40 different titles available now, very slickly done. Good spread of titles too. Another glossy ad copy. Third a four page spec sheet. Machine has two I/O ports, with comments about ability to use mouse, keypad with it as well (?). Will output regular and S-VHS video (!). The video modes are listed as: DYUV 16 million color RGB 32,768 colors CLUT 8 256 colors CLUT7/RL7 128 colors CLUT4 – 16 colors RL3 8 colors Video resolutions are: 384/768 horizontal; 240/480 vertical. hmmm… amiga images should translate real well, huh? 🙂 It has built in transition effects (saw some good examples of fades, etc on the discs – built into hardware). The remote control (maybe most important part of system, since you use it to control the system, right?) is a thing of beauty. Uses a 'thumbstick' to move cursor around. Very natural. (hope commodore steals that idea for CDTV soon!). I could quibble about the placement of the 'button' but overall the thing fits comfortably in one hand, and is real easy to use. I picked it up in a few seconds. (unlike the CDTV remote, which pretty much required two hands to operate) The marketing company for Phillips had a fellow at the kiosk just to explain the system to folk (did not depend on the Sears personnel, in other words). Don't think that they will be there long, but a real nice marketing touch to start with, I think. And there were people there too. The entire time I was there others were also around. Anyway, just thought I'd post my initial impressions of the thing. Very favorably impressed, if you can't tell. Oh yeah, price: $800 walks you out with one, + the freebie discs, etc…. whew!