DCTV Question for Amiga 2000

[amigadave]

Ami_GFX wrote:

Yeah, DCTV is cool. It is one of the most underrated pieces of Amiga hardware around.................

Totally agree with that statement!  DCTV could do amazing displays with minimal resources.  I don't understand why it did not succeed more, but I guess that the people that developed it got distracted with bigger and better things (I believe if my memory serves me correctly the developers of DCTV joined with ex-NewTek employees and formed Play Inc.)

IMHO DCTV was a revolutionary device that could have done so much more and could have helped Commodore and Amiga greatly if further development had been done and,or more game programmers had written a version of their games in DCTV format.  Can you imagine all of our favorite Amiga games running at 24bit color depth and full speed on any Amiga model.

I once saw at an Amiga Show an stock 030 A3000 w/DCTV running the complete Back to the Future movie in DCTV format from the hard drive, smoothly and at full speed with no skipped frames.  This was years before anyone was able to duplicate that feat on a PC or Mac.  I was amazed and put the DCTV on my Amiga "Must Have" shopping list.  I think I have 6 or 7 DCTV's now and 2 of them have the rare RGB add-on units to allow the DCTV format display to be shown on any 15kHz RGB monitor, like a 1080, or 1084, so you don't have to switch back and forth from RGB to Composite and back.

I thought there was one game that came out in DCTV format, but can't think of the name.  Maybe I am confusing it with the 24bit game that came with the OpalVision card?

[amigadave]

beller wrote:

amigadave wrote:

...I don't understand why it did not succeed more, but I guess that the people that developed it got distracted with bigger and better things (I believe if my memory serves me correctly the developers of DCTV joined with ex-NewTek employees and formed Play Inc.)

IMHO DCTV was a revolutionary device that could have done so much more and could have helped Commodore and Amiga greatly if further development had been done and,or more game programmers had written a version of their games in DCTV format.  Can you imagine all of our favorite Amiga games running at 24bit color depth and full speed on any Amiga model.

Amiga Dave wins the prize for hitting this one right on the head!

As I've said before, I wrote the digitize and process setions, as well as a bunch of the front end, of the DCTV manual. As a result, I was lucky and got to see DCTV before anyone else...I still have the video around here that shows Randy Jongens demoing a very beta version of the software so we could write the manual.

At one point I know that Digital Creations, and their partners from Progressive Image, had talks with Commodore about selling CBM the DCTV technology for installation into upcoming Amiga products (this would have been about the time the A4000/1200 was in development).  I think CBM compared DCTV to the AGA concept, which they owned, and decided not to pay Digital for the rights to use DCTV technology.

Not sure if this story every made it beyond the backroom at Digital but, since it's so long and all the companies are gone, what the heck.  I feel like Cheney, lets declassify it!

Bob

You mean I haven't lost all my marbles yet? :lol:  

Very interesting to have some of my guesses and memories from the distant past confirmed.  I did not know the part about DCTV being considered by Commodore as a native display option for the A4000/A1200. Too bad Commodore/Amiga did not decide to go with both display technologies in the last Amigas and support the DCTV format earlier.  With most Amigas connected to 1080 and 1084 monitors in the early days, it would have been a "no brainer" to use the DCTV format for programs that did not need the sharpness of the RGB output, like games and perhaps image manipulation software.  I don't know how the DCTV RGB converter works, but it does not seem to be an expensive, or power hungry device (compared to today's graphic display devices and cards).  Now I am going to have to spend some time on my A500 w/A530 & 8mb RAM that has one of my DCTV's installed to refresh my memory of all the features and the display quality of the DCTV.

For those unfamiliar with what DCTV is, or does, a short explanation in layman's terms is offered.  DCTV displays a composite signal using 3 or 4 bit planes that appears to have a 24bit color range.  The Amiga thinks it is just manipulating the 3, or 4 bit planes, so it can easily run animations at a high frame rate using such a low bit plane format.  If memory serves me, I think the DCTV display quality is close to standard TV display or VHS composite display quality.

[amigadave]

To answer the original poster's question:

No, you can't use the DCTV for displaying Workbench and instead of all the other recommendation's on how to get s-video out of your Amiga, just go to eBay and buy a monitor that WILL display the native Amiga display format.  You will be much happier looking at the RGB display instead of any composite display.