#CBM Announces CDTV!
58 messages in this thread
Betty,
"Suppose that the major textbook companies had such a disk made for each of
its textbooks."
I think you may have found a way to make a million bucks ;-).
You would have a better feel than I for this, but I can't visualize most
parents plunking down $1000 for a player, tho. Maybe later, at <$300. But
you bring up a side issue which has been gnawing at me a little:
Wouldn't most parents instead ask this question: "Can I get a drive and all
these discs (it's common to call cdrom disks 'discs' to emphasize the diff)
for the computer I have NOW?" For example, parents don't go buy movie
projectors so kids can view school movies at home… they would want a
VHS/Beta tape instead these days, if the subject came up.
Second part of this thought: the trouble with a player is that you can only
view the data you're voyaging through… you can't really "use" the data.
OTOH, a disc useable on all machines would mean that you could, say, grab
statistics on various populations and create a chart for a term paper. Or
snapshot a map, shrink it down and place it within a report.
Some work has gone in this direction already: CD-XA is being created by
Microsoft/Sony so that there will be standard A/V file formats useable on
different home computers. Also, what happens when THOR hits and anyone can
write to a CDROM? Anyway, just some more food for thought. – kev
I think you are right about being able to 'use' the information, as well as
search it, etc. Why not a fast serial port, that would connect to your
real computer, so that the report you just looked up in the CDEncyclopedia
or such would be moved over to your computer automatically. Images too. IF
you had gobs of database type info avail, it would give a whole new meaning
to the term 'online-research' 🙂 (just though about something… what
about copyright? what rules would apply? –jp–
John,
That's a darned nice/clever idea about using the serial port that way. So
even without an expanded system, ANY computer brand owner could make use of
the info from his player.
Quick, get a patent! <grin> And then convince the player-makers!
BTW, long ago I read an article that said Sony was pushing CD-A player
makers to include a hidden plug just for hooking it up to a CD-I/whatever
adapter. Anybody seen evidence of this? CD-A normally isn't compatible…
but only because CDROM requires more stringent error correction
circuitry… and supposedly raw signals could be fed into the right decoder
chips. ?
Kev,
Forget the serial port – too slow! Make it an Ethernet port <GRIN>
Couldn't get a simpler connection than a simple (and single) BNC connector.
And if Ethernet is too much, there is always SCSI.
73, Kelly
Yeah, but EVERYONE's got a serial port, and while its not 1meg a second, it
can move pretty fast, can't it? I'm thinking Midi baud rates, etc (isn't
that around 31K?) I could live with that… (after all, you would only be
using it to transfer information, not do actual searches of the CD ROM
disk.) –jp–
John,
Sure, everybody has _a_ serial port, with emphasis on the singular 'a'.
But serial ports are slow. Sure, we on Amiga's can do midi speeds on the
serial port, but we are the exception. ibm's have a tough time doing 9600
bps on the 8088 machines. Most hardware devices build their serial ports
to work with the lowest common denominator, 8088 machines. Even Tektronix
does it – they limit the speed out the serial ports of their oscilliscopes
to 9600 (or was it 4800) bps.
Getting back to the singular serial port point – Sure everybody has a
serial port. But you don't see people making hard disks run on the serial
port, now, do you?
SCSI would be the next step up from a serial port. It is much faster, and
almost any machine can have a SCSI port now. The only problem is you
easily share the CD drive with more than one machine, or if you wanted more
than one drive, you require another SCSI unit number, of which there are
very few to start with.
Now if you go Ethernet (thin of course), you still have high speed, you can
share the unit with more than one computer, you can easily have more than
one CD-drive available, so you could have more than one CD online, giving
you more than one subject area available right now. It is becoming very
cheap to add Ethernet boards to most computers now, at least Amigas and
clones, dunno about Macs.
With the availability of Ethernet addons for the Amiga (and clones), what I
see happening in a home is have one Amiga, at least an Amiga 2000, which
would have it's own hard drive, maybe a second larger hard drive (ideally
would be a r/w optical drive), a multiport serial board with a couple of
printers, maybe a modem, and a fax unit, and the Ethernet board. Now when
it came time to adding another computer in the household, say for the kids,
spouse in his/her favorite work nook in the house, what ever, you could do
this by getting an Amiga 500 with a slap on Ethernet unit, some internal
ram expansion (bring the machine up to 3 megs of ram), plug into the
Ethernet,
[ MORE ]
Then, plug your Amiga 2000 into a modem, run TSS Net and Xwindows to your
VAX at work (through an asyncronous port) and you're truly connected.
[ continuation ]
and all the facilities of the main Amiga are available to a lowly 500. You
don't have to start buying more printers, modems, hard drives, since they
are all available over Ethernet. If you want to run PPage, just double
click on it over the Network, it loads it into your machine, and away you
go. When you want to print your work, the output goes back over the
network to the printer on the main Amiga.
Now, if you want to add a CD-ROM to the system, just stick it in on the
network. Any machine can use it, you can add more easily, and you aren't
using up valuable SCSI unit numbers. Ethernet fits into what I consider
the future scheme of things!
73, Kelly
:::It is becoming very cheap to add Ethernet boards to most computers now,
at least Amigas and clones, dunno about Macs.
I think Ethernet on a Mac starts at around $500 or so, I don't know whether
you consider that "very cheap," though. Interestingly, there are some
external Ethernet controllers that can be put on the low-end (slotless)
Macs – they run off the SCSI port.
:::But you don't see people making hard disks run on the serial port, now,
do you?
Funny thing – the OLD Macs (1984, 1985, before the Mac Plus) had no SCSI
ports, and while some hard drives attached through their external floppy
port, many attached through one of their serial ports! Mac serial ports
(RS-422, an RS-232 superset) are fast (the Appletalk network uses one of
those ports at a 230k baud rate, over 20x faster than 9600 baud, and the
port is technically capable of speed about 4x greater than that if the
device is "externally clocked"). Like the Amiga, the serial ports are
regularly used for MIDI as well. The serial hard drives used to have
"intelligent pass through" connectors so you wouldn't lose the ability to
use the serial port for another device.
Luckily, those hard drives died out when the Macs started coming with SCSI
ports. You couldn't boot from them (they'd use the equivalent of a
"kickstart" floppy), you couldn't daisy-chain them, and, although certainly
a lot faster than a floppy, these were by no means fast devices by today's
standards. ===Scott
OK, I'm sold on SCSI for now. While a NET would be nice, who practically
at their home is going to invest in net-stuff (netware?) just for their
home computer and CDROM? I still think serial would be sufficient for most
things; text articals in most of these on-line mags aren't that long, and
its not like you'd be transfering all the time, but your arguments on SCSI
are convincing. Faster. The unit availability won't be a problem for most
people at home, etc. Even most business computers don't have more than a
couple of SCSI units attached these days. In the future, maybe?? –jp–
NEC has a (new?) system that does the opposite – their system is a CD-ROM
player from which the CD reader detaches to become a portable audio CD
player. Cost for the unit is around $799. This is for IBMs and Macs – I
don't know if the interface is general enough for use on Amiga, and it
would very likely require new driver/player code.
Thanks Harry, I hadn't heard of the NEC unit yet.
A lot of the players use a SCSI interface, so they should be useable on any
machine…. tho as you said, custom file managers and programs are needed
to the current discs out there. ( <— make that: "to access the current" )
Cannot take credit for thinking of using the serial port that way… I
THOUGHT that all LaserDisks were controlled that way?? Also, when I bought
my VCR a year ago, I planned on finding a way to hook my computer up to its
external EDIT port. No luck. I can't even find anyone who can give me the
darn SPECS for the port — dang! tffn –jp–
John,
Yah, I don't understand why all home gadgets don't have a standard
controller port (of whatever protocol/type). Worse, when they _do_ have a
port, they rarely are willing to give any info out. Makes me crazy, too
;-).
Side story: the original 3-piece cd-i players (disc, computer, expansion)
connected the drive/computer like this: the computer used a 1200 baud
serial port to tell the drive which track/sector to read. The drive then
shot that info back into the computer over a data line.
So we had a cool idea for development work (where it's important to use
your target player for testing instead of the "real" computer you're
developing with)… we'd make a small controller which took the 1200 baud
request, and which would then read a logical sector from a shared SCSI HD
(1-gigabyte) and shoot it into the cd-i computer via a par/serial data
line… thus allowing realtime emulation of a "homemade" CDROM.
We got into this because most cd-i title places are backed with millions of
dollars, and we figured this would go over big. We even got a preliminary
order for two boards for $40K. (nice market, eh? 😉 Unfortunately everyone
in the biz got the same idea at the same time :-(. So much for that. Our
first and only foray into cd-i land.
I bring this up because someone may want to do a similar gizmo for CDTV.
After all, you'd do development work on a 68030-equipped A2000/3000 (unless
you're a masochist), but would need to do testing on as real a CDTV (A500
plus CDROM drive) environment as possible. Something to think about. – kev
Question: in Commodore CDTV, do you know if it will include a mousie port,
so that CanDo type applications could run on it? (I assume that there will
be someway to get a PROGRAM into the darn machine???) A keyboard could be
simulated on screen for whenever alpha responses were required… –jp–
There's supposed to be an infrared remote controller.. I assume that it has
a joystick or at least arrow keys on it.
Planned peripherals are "infrared computer keyboard, infrared joysticks, a
3.5" disk drive, printer, and gnelocking card", according to the CBM
announcement.
Now I wonder just how much of an A500 is actually in there. Someone said
there was an expansion bus/slot. If all of an A500 was inside, then it
seems to me that any amiga hacker could add most peripherals himself. ?
yeah I saw a picture of the keyboard fro the CES press kit (ever wonder
what they did with all those returned a1000 keyboards? They're black now).
Ben
(rolling on floor laughing)… hey, you're not kidding, are you?? <grin>
[A1000 keyboards]
Not at all, I'm perfectly serious.
Ben
John,
There is a file in Library 1 that gives the technical specifications for
the CDTV – everything in/on it and the peripherals to be available for it.
……Betty
Ah. Nice specs. Now CDTV sounds like a contender to me, I gotta admit it!
Market it right, with good titles, and it should fly.
The player hardware differences now basically drop to:
CD-I : twice as fast cpu, better gfx, full-motion video.
CDTV : keybd/parallel/serial ports, floppy port, MIDI, are built-in.
Everything else appears to be the same.
In fact, I'd rather buy a CDTV player and expand it, than buy an A500.
Does sound nice, now doesn' it? I hope they sell millions of them – and
that our developers can use Amigas to develop things for it. For myself, I
want it to read the CDROM disks that are being released for the PC – in
particular, disks from a place called Automated Archives that contain all
kinds of genealogical information. I dream of having every census ever
made on a single CDROM with proper search routines. Ditto all immigration
records, deed records, court records, etc. Not exciting for games, not so
great to look at, but marvelous for finding ancestors.
(BTW, such disks already exist.)
……Betty
Ack! <laughing> Betty, I think you've just caused me to think that CD-I
will win out after all! ;-).
You're talking about stuff which any old computer can do (and already
does!). If CDTV developers create databases, they're dead meat. There's
already tons of those, anyway. Lemme see: a full catalog of GM parts for
$995. Or the GNP of farming communities from 1929 to the present: only
$11,000 on CDROM. Ugh. Okay, maybe they can beat the prices <grin>. Sure,
most are around $100-300, but they're _static_ data.
Obviously _you_ need a CDROM drive for your Amiga. You're going to
manipulate and search its collected data. All well and good…
BUT! Remember, the majority of home buyers want something _neat_ to use on
the player. It's an _entertainment_ device to them. Even interactive
encyclopedias should be fun to casually flip through. These consumers won't
have printers, or keyboards, or disk drives… they'll have a standalone
player which had better have pizazz in its available discs!
<hopping from foot to foot in excitement> Don't you guys get it? This is
something new, something BEYOND dry computer applications.
Check out that article "Interactive Construction Kit" in the June
Amigaworld… those pictures there come the closest to what I mean. Throw
in some sound and you're close to what most early discs will be like. best
– Kev
Kevin, I want it to be entertaining – but to play these disks, too. If
there are things available for ANY computer, and those things provide
information I want, I want MY computer/interactive video/whatever to play
it, too. Don't want a separate player for everything that interests me.
Besides, you are not (apparently) aware of how we could use the hypermedia
stuff on such a disk. For instance, clicking on a name could bring up
every mention of that name on all that disk! Or, going back to your other
ideas, clicking on a place name might show us what that place was like at
the time in history we were speaking of. Genealogy is not just collecting
names and dates – it is learning how our ancestors lived, what was
important in their lives, what was happening around them, and how they have
influenced our own lives. Nothing makes history come alive more than
learning how it has affected one's own family.
……Betty
Kevin,
What is the intended market of CD-I? What kinds of applications are
being developed for it? What makes CD-I (or CDTV) different from a
computer that will also appeal to the home user? Technical specs aren't
what I'm looking for, those won't sell a machine to the non-computer
literate user.
A CDROMs greatest strength is the moderately large data storage
capacity, data that by definition is static. What better use for it than to
provide information. Sure, games can use the storage space, but what else
other than subject specific data?
Look, here we are in what is supposed to be the information age, and the
average citizen doesn't have access to even the smallest part of the
available public info. Sure, it's available, but where and at what cost,
and how do I get it, and ….. (you get the idea)
Here is a short list of the type of data that I would like to see on
CDROM:
NASA mission data.
Library of Congress index.
Scientific journal abstracts and references.
Global population and product info.
Historical info grouped by time period and/or event.
Laypersons guides to assorted subject matter. (science, math, lit.,
ect…)
Every one of these I would use on a regular basis, IF I had access to
them. Many times I get interested in a subject, but have no easy way to
learn more due to the time it takes to find the info in the first place.
Theres nothing 'neater' than learning something new, especially when
it's fun doing it. As an example, (I'm hung up on space), if all the NASA
mission data were available for the Jupiter encounters, and children knew
that many of the images had never even been seen, much less studied, how
many would get caught up in searching the data looking for something new.
And whats even better, learning something while doing it. In my mind,
theres nothing dry about that application.
Dean
DKB Software
Betty,
By law, census information (other that the statistics released to the
general public) is held for a minimum of 75 years before release- federal
law. Statistics you can get (heck, here on CIS has CENDATA) but the actual
forms people filled out, etc. you can't.
-Chas
Charles, How well I know about census data!! However, the census through
1910 are available now, and the 1920 census will be released soon. When
searching for ancestors, that is close enough. I have NO need for
statistics – but those names, with the whole family listed along with ages
and birthplaces, are invaluable.
……Betty
John-
Only the $2000+ industrial laser disk players have serial ports. I
think that consumer level machines will gain them toward the end of this
year maybe…?
Tim
Oops. I spoke too soon. Looks like we may get our wish for standardized
external control after all. There've been several methods promoted over the
years, but these guys finally have the clout to make it happen, I hope.
Here's the announcement:
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. said Wednesday it has launched a joint
venture with Philips of the Netherlands to promote the Domestic Digital Bus
— a data communication and control system for audio, visual and other
consumer products.
The company said the system, called D2B, will enable products of different
brands bought at different times to function as an integrated system,
making them compatible.
The D2B was recognized by the International Electrotechnical Commission as
an international standard for compatibility among audio-visual equipment
and home appliances manufactured by different companies.
Matsushita said Thomson Consumer Electronics of France and Sony Corp. of
Japan have decided to support the system.
Hey Kev… if you're counting on Microsoft to write CD-I stuff…
<grinning>
First of all, it'll be late. Real late.
Next, it won't fit in the memory space.
Third, they'll use the address lines as flags and crash everything.
And lastly, it'll be broke.
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Hehe. Right on all counts about Microsoft.
OTOH, they just sold 200,000 copies of Windows 3.0 in three weeks. Not a
shabby job.
But no, Microsoft is into DVI. Digital Research is more into CD-I. There
are at least 200 companies licensed to make or create CD-I players or
titles. There are several times that licensed to create DVI titles. But DVI
is a computer peripheral, while CD-I is a home standalone player.
So CD-XA is intended to merge CDROM, DVI and CD-I, by having standard
audio/video files usable on all computers/players. The audio format already
settled on is CD-I's, btw.
That's why I brought up CD-XA and the Sony/Microsoft connection. A player
that adhered to CD-XA would be in like Flynn. Unfortunately the CD-XA
standard hasn't been worked out yet. In any case, I would assume CBM is
keeping a eye on it. Maybe not an issue yet.
Ben,
You forgot: <more grins>
1. use reserved interrupts regardless of what the chip manufacturer says.
2. don't document what you did with those interrupts.
How much stuff on the IBM-PC was based on "undocumented interrupts?"
BobS
There are other things I forgot, too… such as, make composite video by
asking a 3-year old to design the circuit (did you ever LOOK at how they
made what they called composite? People think that the cbm encoder is bad,
THAT thing was the king of crud!
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Ben,
I'm not really a hardware techie, more of a software one. I can tell good
software when I see it (MicroSloth hasn't produced any for years). If I
remember correctly, Bill Gates _purchased_ the original DOS from a company
called DRI (not too sure of the name, it was a long time ago that I read
about it). Maybe I'll be able to remember better after completion of
nicotine withdrawal (3 1/2 months now after smoking for 33 years).
BobS
If it's an Amiga, then you can use things like SnipIt to grab the numbers
you want for a chart… 🙂 Far too often, companies have gone to CD and
proprietary driver / access programs *PRECISELY* because they want to
protect their data – when Tandy's Thor hits, (read/write CD-ROM drives to
the rest of y'all) don't you think some of the steam will be taken from CD
in general? Won't there be lots of backlash against common file formats,
precisely because people want to protect their data? For example, NEC has
a great disk of 3D models, it's out, it's shipping now. However, all it
exports is 2D clip art, of shaded views of the object. No 3D export,
because they want to protect their data. If some company has gone to the
trouble of making 600 meg of fine, distilled data, do they want to give it
away?
If it's just a player, then you don't have Snipit to do grabs ;-).
I think there'll be even more cry for common file formats soon. We already
had a discussion of this in CDROM forum a while back.
Yes, quite a few companies keep their formats secret. Others publish their
file specs (especially the gov't, it seems). My argument at the time was
that the secretive companies were denying themselves more sales to
Amiga/ST/etc owners. I felt/feel that people would not copy the data, but
would write access programs to get at it… which would mean more disc
sales for title makers.
I got the impression (perhaps wrong) that the big money was not about
keeping the data secret, but in keeping their search engines (programs)
secret.
But yeah, a full 600 meg of data can be a bunch of work to create. Still,
would you be in any worse position than any program creator? Until
Thor/etc, 600 meg is too much to copy (as Steve said).
Certainly a lot to think about on this subject.
It is not just a player. Options come with CDTV for a remote keyboard,
mouse, joysticks, etc. as well as modem, genlock, disk drive (floppy) and
so on. It can be turned (almost) into an A500.
-Chas
Right, you can make the players into full user computers.
But what I was saying is: a normal home user on any stock home player
doesn't have SnipIt, etc. So there's no way for him/her to grab and really
use the data off the CDROM.
Which brought up interesting ideas from a coupla people. I hope CBM is
listening.
CDTV has a drive port – anyone who wants to work on charts, spreadsheets,
etc., can add a floppy and run ordinary Amiga applications, right?
Including any applications designed for Amigas with CD-ROM drives… Given
the size of the Amiga market, the ST market, the Coco market, you name it,
as compared to the size of the PC and Mac market, I can understand why NEC
says "Who cares!" when faced with the prospect of all those additional
sales. (heavy sarcasm mode)
I'm in full agreement with your sarcasm…
My argument at the time went something like this: CDROM hasn't really taken
off. The Mac/PC titlers are always wishing for more buyers, right?
So why ignore the markets where people have demonstrated that they wish to
go onto new frontiers, and have the money and ability to do so?? And
specifically, I pointed out Amiga and ST owners.
The replies were along the line of trouble porting their search engines. So
I said, "Hey, I'm sure 3td party developers would be GLAD to help you out.
How can you lose? Any new market is icing on the cake!".
<shaking head> I dunno. Perhaps CDTV will make them wake up some, at least.
To state the obvious, the Amiga hasn't had great appeal when compared to
the PC and the Mac. If people haven't heard of it, haven't used it, and
don't know what it's about, we can hardly expect them to want to port to it
– even if it might enhance their product, or that it would be easy to port
their engine, etc. Second, getting into a new market costs time, effort
and money. If the payoff isn't obvious, I expect few takers. Xiphias is
porting to CDTV, their name was on several CDTV demos. BTW, I think the
CDTV demo CDs were demos made with AmigaVision, not real engines. They were
mastered on real CDs, but may have been "just" hard disk images of these
demos…
Perhaps they expect everything to be done under AmigaVision? And that's why
there's the database connection in it?
Y'know, there's a few pieces of the puzzle still missing here, and one of
them is: where's the big announcement about running the CDROM/CDTV stuff on
your regular Amiga? Is this planned? Or shall we pay $1000 + expansion
costs to get another A500 with a cdrom drive?
Come to think of it, I don't recall CBM themselves actually coming out and
stating that you could develop for CDTV using regular Amigas, either. We've
assumed it. I'd love to be corrected on this. Somebody?
Umm, just thought of something else: many developers will almost certainly
consider a cdrom app to be within its rights to take over the machine!
After all, we're talking _one_ disc working at a time in a stock home
player, eh?
That may not bode well for using these discs in a normal multitasking Amiga
personal computer setup. I hope that CBM keeps an eye on their developers.
The newest Amigaworld has a few pages on what they call the Baby (note, no
"Amiga" attached). They state that it is basically an A500 without all the
peripherals. My dealer says that the upcoming Amiga conferences (Atlanta,
and I think Miami?) have a few notes on CD-ROM and the Amiga and CBM is
supposed to say something about it.
-Chas
At the press conference, they did explicitly say that developers could use
Amigas to make CDTV applications. What's the cost of CD players these
days, for SCSI? I'm sure that's what Commodore is using. Hell, I'll get a
CDTV just for fun. My 5 1/4 drive bay is filled anyways.
So John, When is Trash Shack going to release the THOR? It seems like
they are overdue on their $500 SCSI r/w optical drive. It was supposed to
be out a couple of months ago – if they stuck to their announcement just
over two years ago.
73, Kelly
I think it was just an announcement to get press attention… Shortly
afterwards, I seem to remember they extended their ship date by another 18
months…
John,
I knew when trash shack made that announcement it was nothing more than
just a publicity scam! Pretty amazing how many reporters whre sucked in by
it. Any reporter on their tows should have been raking the trash shack
executives responsible for such a premature announcement over the coals –
and I would have gladly supplied the coals.
So 24 months turns into 42 months…. What do you expect from a company
that can't even make compatible clones (with the sh**iest keyboards in the
industry to boot).
73, Kelly
:::What do you expect from a company that can't even make compatible clones
Hmmm – why are TRS clones "less compatible" than others? What kinds of
things to they have trouble running?
You can't upgrade the graphics on many of their clones, and a lot of the
internals of them are non-standard.(RAM, etc)
John
Scott,
Not that this is the place for it, but for a number of their machines, you
have to buy "their" expansion boards. I have seen software for MS-dos
machines not run on the trash shack computers due to the copy protection.
Now I am hearing trash shackis using a diferent chip for the serial port
which breaks a number of programs that need to get to the hardware – pretty
sure the last one was on a tandy machine.
I don't have a Tandy clone. Wouldn't have one in my house – even if it was
given to me. Can't even type on those keyboards of theirs.
But like I said before, this isn't the place to be discussing trash shack
clones.
73, Kelly
It's my understanding that TRS clones exhibit many hardware
incompatibilities, and in that sense, are'nt even good clones…
-Rick
ps- not to mention overpriced. Despite what Tandy says in their ads,
they're not *my* *Technology store*…;-)
Kelly – THOR works, and works better than they hoped (far more write/erase
cycles).
Unfortunately, they need a breakthrough on a critical aspect of the write
technology (I'm sure you can figure out what I mean 😉 in order to make
the device a reasonable size.
They may have what they need soon. OTOH, others say that Write-Once drives
and media will also come along, which will be too cheap to ignore as an
alternative.
PS: I'm watching a PBS show hosted by Ted Koppel right now… on future
information distribution. Tom Wolfe, John Sculley, MIT people, etc. Really
fascinating. Check your listings to see if it'll be on soon.
Hi Kev,
I know there are r/w optical drives available now, but I don't have a spare
$3k+++ lying around <GRIN>. When they get to under $1k CDN, then I'll bite
– real hard. My dealer better watch I don't take any of his fingers in the
process.
If it wasn't for that premature announcement by trash shack over two years
ago, I am sure the marked would have invested more in the WORM technology,
and we would WORM drives available to us at a much lower cost than they go
for now. Instead, thanks to the jerks at tandy, everybody decided to hold
off getting WORMS, since it wasn't going to be too long before trash shack
would have low cost r/w optical drives. Hopefully drives such as the
MegaDrive sold by Impulse will see a drastic price reduction in the next 6
months – I can dream, right?
I'll watch out for that PBS show. PBS WTVS from Detroit (what is normally
seen all across Canada) doesn't seem tohave much for hi-tech shows – I
can't even find Computer Chronicles in the listing. Nova is usually the
most high tech for that station. Say, did you catch the Skyscraper series
(four or five parter)? It sure re-afirmed to me, iron workers are nuts!
When I have to walk the beams at work, I don't move very fast!
73, Kelly
But John, couldn't you whip up an INTERCHANGE module for the NEC 3D data
right away??? (joke) –jp–
As I said – either you didn't hear me, or you're inciting me to strangle
you – that NEC doesn't release the data format of their 3D disks.
I heard you. Please dont strangle me. –jp–
Kevin,
Parents in our community frequently pay tutors $20-25 per hour to help
their kids with math, grammar, and science. I believe that interactive
tutoring material that would cover the same territory covered in a given
textbook would certainly be attractive to many parents. Having such
material available would give a good feeling to those who really bought it
for entertainment, anyway.
Most states (certainly Texas does) prescribe a certain body of facts to be
covered in each grade and in each subject. The Texas contract for
textbooks, being statewide, is so huge that it has tremendous influence on
the content of the nation's textbooks. I'm thinking of the kind of things
that can be developed with AMigaVision, but could then be put onto the CDTV
for the kids to use. It would follow the textbook explicitly, but give
extra/better/more interesting coverage than the textbook alone could do –
much as a good private tutor would do.
……Betty
And it would sure be better than having the kids play Nintendo all day!
A good interactive/hypermedia disc can be very intriguing. TIME did an
article on this stuff back in 1988… one example they gave was of a Mac
program hooked to a videodisc player for studying "The Grapes of Wrath",
developed by a California school.
Chock full of speeches by FDR, art of the period, music, pictures,
newspaper headlines, and even statistics on farming and money.. to show
why/how the Great Depression affected people. I'm sure it beats heck out of
the oldstyle studying we used to do on this subject. A kid (or grownup)
could spend a long and fascinating time in front of such a thing.
Now wouldn't that be a kicker? Having to force kids to NOT "study" in the
future?