How useful is a DCTV

[amigadave]

The DCTV was/is a great piece of hardware.  I went to a show once and saw a stock A3000 playing from the hard drive, the complete "Back to the Future II" movie that had been converted, "frame by frame" to the DCTV format.  I was amazed and decided that I had to get one.

I am surprised that more was not done with the DCTV format and hardware and the Amiga, as it gets great display results with tiny file sizes and full screen, full color animations can be run with just an 68030 and SCSI-2 (and perhaps even IDE) hard drives.  DCTV Paint was recognized as one of the best paint programs available for the Amiga for a long time.

I am a strong believer in DCTV and early Amigas (that's why I own more than a few of them).   :-D

[amigadave]

ral-clan wrote

Just a question: I ALREADY have an internal (videoslot) scandoubler and Picasso II graphics card on my A2000.  Will this conflict with the DCTV.

>> No, it will work fine. <<  

i.e. with this setup is there still a video signal going to the old RGB monitor port on my A2000?

>> I am pretty sure the signal is still present at the stock 23 pin RGB port on the A2000 that will have the DCTV connected to it, but the screen display you are using for workbench is a Picasso II display mode, so that will not be present on the stock RGB port.  When you start other programs (such as the DCTV software that is not mode promotable, it is passed through the Picasso II card unchanged.  These display modes should be available on the stock RGB port connected to the DCTV.<<

With this setup I normally boot to an 800x600 16-bit Workbench screen.  What would happen if I ALSO had an old 1084 monitor hooked up to the RGB port at the same time?   I assume the same 16-bit 800x600 signal would also be sent to the RGB port and could fry my 1084.  Or does RTG software like Cybergraphix totally shut off output to the old RGB port and re-direct it to the graphics card when high scan rates like this are run?

>> There is no way for the Picasso II card to send the 16-bit 800x600 signal back through the stock RGB port and hurt your 1084.  I think all you will get is a grey or black screen on the 1084 when a display mode from the Picasso II is in control.<<

If I plan to test the DCTV by temporarily hooking it and my old 1084 to my normally unused RGB port, will I fry them both when my Amiga starts up in 800x600 (or higher).

>> NO <<

So how does this all work?  Since I went scandoubler/RTG I've never used the old monitor port.

Thanks.

You are welcome, hope this helps.  You also need to hook up a composite cable to the 1084 and switch back and forth from RGB to Composite to see the images correctly, and hook up the DCTV cable to the parallel port to do scans.

Have fun.

[amigadave]

fiat1100d wrote:

amigadave wrote:
The DCTV was/is a great piece of hardware.  I went to a show once and saw a stock A3000 playing from the hard drive, the complete "Back to the Future II" movie that had been converted, "frame by frame" to the DCTV format.  I was amazed and decided that I had to get one.

Frame by frame? So how much time was needed for the whole conversion? I read of many seconds per frame!!

I don't know how long it took them to convert each frame of the movie to an animation frame in DCTV format, but I am sure they used a batch processing program to do it.  What I don't know is what method they used to digitize the movie frames/fields into digital format to then convert to DCTV format from 24bit.  All I know is that I was blown away that the movie was streaming from the hard drive and displaying at full screen, full speed, full color composite NTSC resolution from a stock A3000.  Everyone that saw it was looking under the table to try to find the VCR that must have been playing a tape.  It was an unbelievable accomplishment for the time, given the computing power and hard drive performance available at the time (around 1990 I think).