Is a DCTV worth it today!!!!!

[Motormouth]

Is the DCTV even worth bothering with today or does it have some value?

The digitization is probably not worth it in the days of cell phone video and 1080P.

However is the 24 bit (probably closer to 21 bit due to compression) output, DCTVpaint, and the may other plugins (like ADpro, etc.) worth it?

[Acill]

I would have to say its more of a novelty these days, but you can still do some real work with it. It is just a lot more work today than you need to go through. Much better and more advanced tools are now available.

[dovegrace]

They're fun to play with.  I've been messing around with mine on my A1200 for the last month, converting digital pics in ImageFX to DCTV format.

While it's fun and nostalgic for a while, I don't think I (personally) would use the DCTV for anything serious these days, as there are much more efficient options out there.

However, if it's all you have, or if you are bound and determined to work to limitations, you can create some amazing stuff on the DCTV.

[Ral-Clan]

I posted this exact question a few years ago and the response was positive (see link to thread below):
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=25808&highlight=dctv

[B00tDisk]

What was inside the DCTV anyway?  RAM for a framebuffer?  Genlock?  25-bit DAC for higher res/color video?  All of the above?

[Duce]

Novelty device these days, but can still be some fun.

[vince_6]

Was it better that VIDI RT24?

[Motormouth]

What was inside the DCTV anyway?  RAM for a framebuffer?  Genlock?  25-bit DAC for higher res/color video?  All of the above?

The best way I describe the DCTV is a transceiver.  It takes and uses the regular OCS/ECS video (3bit or 4bit) and (high res or high res lace) modes.  It uses the first line of the image for its compression algorithm, the rest of the image is encoded.  Effectively is a fixed decoding algorithm that outputs composite video.  

DCTV has very little in the way of its own resources.  The ram and even the encoded image are created by the Amiga itself (which you can see the undecoded image in the regular RGB output with any ILBM viewer.)  As a result Any full screen viewer can be used to view with the DCTV.

The digitizer is a slow scan type (though a relatively fast one) (slow scan means it is not real time).  It takes a composite imagine and makes a encoded compressed image, that is handled in the amiga like a regular ILBM image.  

Because the DCTV is a fixed image decoder.  It can be used to make fast animations, as fast as the Amiga can be used to make conventional high res and high res lace animations normally play.

Was it better that VIDI RT24?

As compared to the VIDI RT24, I don't know......