#CDTV Software Wishlist
25 messages in this thread
Kevin,
So the home market seems to be games and interactive tours. (museum,
foreign countries, ect..) Educational disks aren't seen as a strong player
for the home market?
CBM seems to be trying to avoid the 'games' image with CDTV, but I
really don't see much else that would appeal to the average consumer.
Unfortunatly, $1000 seems to be a bit much for a games console. 8(
I'm going to have to spend some more time thinking of possible
applications for CDTV (or CD-I) in the home setting. There just doesn't
seem to be a whole lot that would sell.
Dean
DKB Software
Dean – yeah, it's hard to conceive of hundreds of interactive titles (other
than games and tours). Maybe we're not imaginative enough? <grin>
Maybe you're right: educational topics (well, like that National Geographic
disk I mentioned would count, kinda, right?) will do okay. Hey, a
Scientific American disc could be cool, too. Or a Popular Science disc?
Perhaps with the right tools, it'll become so easy for magazines to create
them, that it'll become common for people to order the interactive disc
along with a regular paper subscription?
Well, how about a collection of classic sci fi stories, or mysteries?
I can think of lots of ways interactive animation, graphics and sound would
spice that up. The raw material already exists. You just add the graphics
and sound. (Example — the collected Nero Wolfe stories, or Asimov's robot
stories.)
?|^] Ray Lewis
Ray,
I can see having collected works for searching for quotes, and so on.
But wondering how well text plus animated pictures would do (as in your
Robot anthology example). Would you actually read an entire book off a TV
screen or monitor? I probably wouldn't, myself.
Hmmm. Short stories maybe. Or as mentioned before, if the story was
narrated (in different character voices) to me while displaying
accompanying pictures.
Of course, if it came to that, why not just a regular movie of the story?
<grin> Which would you rather have: videotapes of the Twilight Zone series,
or a disc with the text and some video animation?
I can definitely see your idea working for children's books tho!
Imagine Blade Runner (just as an example). A 'digitized' version of the
movie. But, you control Decker. You control the action, the movie might
become just several 'sets' that you move from/to. Infocom games have become
almost 'intelligent' enough for the characters to handle just about any
input. the characters (like zora, etc) in a digital Blade Runner could,
too. Only difference would be that they have graphic representations.
Almost everything could be an object, and could be cookie-cut from the
background (haven't figured out a way (yet) for the objects behind the
taken one to be shown in their entirety), and compared to a lookup-table of
objects. It would be a new art-form, possibly. –Eet–
Yeah, CDTV would work great for children's books: simple illustrations,
oversized letters (large fonts), and perhaps even color-me pictures
(re-usable), and multiple plot-break points. That's a great idea.
Of course, I'm counting on a huge CD database of _Vista_ material.
tmm/Richard Cunningham
Die and go to BBS Hell 🙂
I agree that you wouldn't want to do this with a new, large novel. (i.e.
make a version with interactive sound and graphics). But I think it would
work quite well for shorter pieces of "classic" fiction, especially
mysteries and some types of sci fi.
For example, in mysteries, quite often they have to go to great lengths to
describe in detail the scene of the crime, and still have to leave a lot
out. Maps can be important. Documents can be important. "Twould be nice
to be able to see them, or to have an animated map that showed the
movements of various suspects on the night of the murder, etc. You could
even make it interactive, like the maps in a D&D game, wherein the
reader/viewer hot keys or mouseklicks to the map, or clue list, or
whatever, and fills in the info for his or herself as they try to outwit
the sleuth.
Similarly, many sci fi stories deal with star maps, environments which
depend on the structure of a particular solar system, machinery/technology
which might be more understandable if you could see a picture of it,
perhaps "working" in an animation, etc. How often do sci fi short stories
have "presentations" in them by a scientist, or a military type, etc. You
could actually see and hear that presentation.
Finally, re the "classic" fiction part — there seems to be quite a
business recycling these into heavily illustrated or even "comic" form.
It's a way to take the loved and familiar and embellish it with a new
dimension. Why not do the same via interactive cd?
?|^] Ray Lewis
I believe that at least one modern sci-fi novel ("Davids Sling" by Marc
Steigler [sp?]) is also out in a "hyper-text" version (still pictures of
technology and the ability to "read" the book from more than one POV). Of
course, I think you need a MAC or a PClone to read it.
IMHO, I think that anything written to take advantage of the new
capabilities would really stretch the medium. Imagine being able to read a
book from the POV of several different protagonists and see objects as they
would have.
It _would_ be considerably more difficult to create a book that could be
read in several different ways, but it could bring new meaning to the word
"collaboration". Instead of the authors switching back and forth, as is
currently done, each writer could develop their story line from one POV
(with frequent or infrequent meetings of characters as the plot dictated).
Of course there might have to be some sort of coordination as to when the
characters did meet … but that could be easily handled. Look at the
"Thieves World" collections by Aspirin and Lynn.
BobS "Stupidity is a capital crime …"
Ray – your ideas of books on interactive CD may have come a bit closer. A
friend left me a note that there was a CD-I conference overseas a few days
ago, and Sony showed two Walkman-style portable CD-I players.
We're trying to get more details. Oh, and that's why using CMOS parts can
be important <grin>. I bet the drive alone must eat up batteries, eh?
best – kev
An interactive tour thru a natural history mus. would tickle me pink… I'd
find all the high-res (goodbye, CD-I – there ISNT ANY!) pics of the
beautiful crytals in the smithsonian and I'd stare for just hours.
I'd pay quite a bit for such a CD, in fact.
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
And add a pair of X-Specs glasses and see the crystals in 3D – use the
direction buttons on the remote to change rotation of the crystals…
73, Kelly
That sounds like a weiner to me!
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
"… find all the high-res (goodbye CD-I – there ISNT ANY!) …"
Huh? Have I or you missed a spec somewhere? Thought we'd covered all those
technical details already a while ago.
kev
Kevin, maybe he's gigging on 'high-res'… CD-I is somewhere around
320X200, as I recall hearing during my tour… not _real_ high res. (good
enough for now, tho, since that's about the res of TV) –Eet–
Eet – see msgs 108422/423. I believe they have the cd-i color modes/res.
The screen size choices are the same as an Amiga. As you say tho, might not
matter on a normal home TV anyway. – kev
Dean,
One need only look at the proliferation of things like "Jane Fondle's
Aerobic workouts" on Videotape. There are a wealth of special interest
topics available on tape, in the areas of education in specific, narrow
topics, self improvement, do-it-yourself, and even such esoterica as tapes
on Madelbrot pictures. All of these could be enhanced by the interactive
nature of something like CDTV.
Things that I personally want, and would buy if the price was not
excessive:
Star catalog
Atlas
Encyclopedia
Art museum tours (Louvre comes to mind)
Any reference work having to do with science
Any 'complete works of..' featuring any one of a number of authors.
All of the above would be predicated on having the subjects fully indexed
and easily and quickly searched. This list was just off the top of my head,
and I am sure I could come up with a coule of dozen more given a while to
think about it.
-larry
Larry,
I agree, however, those are exactly the types of data that I suggested,
but was told by Kevin that these types of dry computer data is not what is
wanted for CD-I. (or CDTV)
As for Jane Fondle's workouts, I doubt that there would be sufficient
interest by the general public to have such a disk sell enough players to
convince the program developer that his efforts would be worthwhile. I see
a 'chicken and egg' problem, and other than games, I don't see enough of a
market to get these machines into the average home.
Dean
DKB Software
Heh-heh. I could be wrong, Dean. I can easily see an interactive video
cdrom for say, a geneology disc for the Darling family. I would indeed get
a kick out of going thru family trees and hearing voices, seeing
homesteads, etc. Would be invaluable and entertaining.
If you took star data, and molded it all into a learning experience…
being able to view from any angle, clicking on a planet/star for more info,
etc… then that would be a good interactive app, also.
What I meant was that the normal cdrom compilations of data are not, well,
entertaining to the general public, if you know what I mean.
I just read in an article that there are over 250,000 cdrom players being
used for "entertainment purposes" in Japan. I wish I knew what that meant
;-).
Dean,
Who says the data has to be 'dry'? A tour of the Louvre could have raw
data for some purposes, digitized pictures of the art for other purposes,
even voice, telling something about the artist, moving video segments
showing restoration work, and so on. Any of the stuff you normally thing of
as being in a reference book can be enhanced in ways that make it
entertaining and enlightening.
I don't know what all aplications CBM is planning on, but they say they
will be there, hopefully in large enough numbers, and of enough interest to
the public to overcome the chicken-and-egg thing. When you figure that the
price of en encyclopedia, for example, is probably in a league with the
CDTV unit itself, and then stop to think that it would be possible to have
a whole lot of other reference works at low cost to 'add on' to the basic
unit, the whole thing looks pretty attractive. Add to that, the livening up
of raw data with video, sound, etc., and it's a sure thing that it will
eventually take off.
-larry
Aye, that's the key to discs for a standalone player: "the livening up of
raw data with video, sound, etc".
I had brought up "dryness" to Dean because I was afraid that some people
were thinking of straight data collections as in a reference manual.
Something like that isn't interactive TV, but okay for cdrom/computer use.
Turn that data into a learning experience or odyssey tho, and then you have
something people could get into.
I think we'll see a lot of that before too long. I remember seeing a
nifty program on a Plato terminal once. It was a tutorial on the use of a
stethescope. Pressing the appropriate spot on a displayed picture of a
chest, you would get a sound, which varied depending on the place you
probed, or depending on the condition of the heart being simulated. That
particular accessory for the sound was a disk, but with an analog
recording, I think. Imagine the enhancements to educational data…
Motor sounds, with different noises demonstrating different problems.
Heart, breathing sounds, coupled with animated movement of the picture.
Bird sounds, animal sounds, and so on.
Heck, I can even imagine monthly magazines with all sorts of nifty
multimedia articles. Thing is, CD-ROMs are cheap now, and with
proliferation, will become even cheaper. We could find ourselves in the
position of having a hard time finding suitable material to fill them up.
Kevin:
Quite a bit of the material for these kinds of things is already standing.
Here in NYC, for example, when the Metropoliton Art Museum has a special
show, they generally have a "walking tour" tape you can rent, with
earphones and player, that takes you through the exhibition. They also
virtually always have very high quality reproductions of the art on sale as
individual prints, or in large "coffee table" books. It would be quite
easy for the world's major art museums to pool this material on an annual
basis, and create a single "best of" cd, perhaps with several languages,
with the visuals digitized at a very high resolution, so you could "zoom"
in on it and retain detail.
For something like this, the raw material already exists, and has already
been paid for.
?|^] Ray Lewis
That's true. So it would seem then that collecting huge amounts of
digitized still and moving data on objects might become a new subindustry
to supply CD artists with?
larry:
How about a guided tour of your Amiga: the RKM in ROM with a complete set
of AutoDocs. Add video for how to set up, add to, or maybe even fix a
troublesome system. Yea, that's the ticket.
regards,
greg
Greg,
Sounds like a winner for Amiga owners. A friend of mine, a local CBM rep,
has done a rather nice tour of the 3000 using AmigaVision, though it only
looks at the physical hardware. It sure would be nice to have something
detailed and indepth.
-larry