Next Gen Amiga&MorphOS need Next Gen DCTV or Graffiti

[amigadave]

With the SAM440ep and EFIKA and likely their successors to have power saving SOC systems that can't compare to the raw power of traditional PC's and Mac's, wouldn't it be nice to have a new DCTV or Graffiti that could output HDTV 1080i resolution video or it's visual equivalent at a fraction of the resource requirement.

Could the technology that was used in the DCTV be extrapolated to make it output HDTV?  I realize that modern graphics cards do most all the work now, but it seems that the SAM440ep and EFIKA could still use some serious help in displaying HDTV movies and animations.

And to sweeten the pot, create an upgraded DCTV Paint to go with it too.

Edit:  Or do we just need DivX or Quicktime codecs ported to AmigaOS4.1/MorphOS2.1?

[mingle]

Hmm.. I thought the original strengths of things like DCTV was that they could create 24-bit GFX that was suitable for genlocking and other analog video stuff like that.

These days most (all?) broadcast/TV imagery is done in the digital domain, so isn't all that's needed is a video card that'll do 1920x1080 and a support video in and fast CPU to push thing along?

Feel free to correct me if I'm WAYYY off! :-)

Cheers,

Mike.

[amigadave]

mingle wrote:
Hmm.. I thought the original strengths of things like DCTV was that they could create 24-bit GFX that was suitable for genlocking and other analog video stuff like that.

These days most (all?) broadcast/TV imagery is done in the digital domain, so isn't all that's needed is a video card that'll do 1920x1080 and a support video in and fast CPU to push thing along?

Feel free to correct me if I'm WAYYY off! :-)

Cheers,

Mike.

Nope, the original strength of the DCTV was that it used a proprietary compression algorithm to display an Amiga 3bit or 4bit display as a 2.1million color analog composite signal.  Not true 24bit images, but so close the human eye could hardly tell the difference.  Since the Amiga was actually only displaying a 3bit or 4bit image that the DCTV device was converting, the Amiga could push the frame rate quite high with very little horsepower.  An 68030/25MHz could playback full length movies from a decent SCSI hard disk without any problem.  Hence my thought that perhaps such a device could be redesigned with a similar purpose for the SAM440ep and EFIKA which lack the CPU power to display HDTV movies (Can the SAM?  I know that the EFIKA has trouble doing so and keeping the sound synced).

DCTV was an incredible invention for it's time, but was not exploited sufficiently.  Now with the emphasis on everyone going "GREEN" and consuming less energy, maybe there is a chance to return to the idea of the DCTV.

DCTV also came with a great paint program and had a slow scan full color digitizer.  They came out later with a composite to RBG converter, which allowed it to be used with a genlock to combine DCTV imagery with video.

[Hammer]

amigadave wrote:
With the SAM440ep and EFIKA and likely their successors to have power saving SOC systems that can't compare to the raw power of traditional PC's and Mac's,

One should add ARMv7 (e.g. Cortex-A8) with 128bit Neon SIMD. These PowerPC CPUs doesn't have instruction set for SIMD.

 wouldn't it be nice to have a new DCTV or Graffiti that could output HDTV 1080i resolution video or it's visual equivalent at a fraction of the resource requirement.

Could the technology that was used in the DCTV be extrapolated to make it output HDTV?  I realize that modern graphics cards do most all the work now, but it seems that the SAM440ep and EFIKA could still use some serious help in displaying HDTV movies and animations.

And to sweeten the pot, create an upgraded DCTV Paint to go with it too.

Edit:  Or do we just need DivX or Quicktime codecs ported to AmigaOS4.1/MorphOS2.1?

The old DCTV methods wouldn't help with pure math based compressions formats e.g. H.264, VC1, MPEG-2 and Advanced Access Content System (AACS) decryption. Refer to hardware H.264 addon cards.

The mobility Radeon 9000 supports MPEG2 and resolutions beyond 1080p.

An 68030/25MHz could playback full length movies from a decent SCSI hard disk without any problem.

Was the content MPEG (VCD) based?

I remember my Amiga 3000/030@25Mhz barely decode MP3 in real time, let alone VCD MPEG.

[Crumb]

One should add ARMv7 (e.g. Cortex-A8) with 128bit Neon SIMD. These PowerPC CPUs doesn't have instruction set for SIMD.

PowerPC has a pretty decent SIMD instruction set called Altivec. It's better to build the next OS4 machine with a cpu that supports VMX/Altivec than using foreign cpus :-)

The old DCTV used a compression similar to YUV, the amiga played a normal animation with not many bitplanes fullscreen from HD without problems and the nice DCTV converted the output to lots of colours. YUV modes already exist in most of graphic cards and is a similar idea to the DCTV. HAM is also a compression method.

Was the content MPEG (VCD) based?

It wasn't and it didn't need to be. It used just a few bitplanes. You could use any method you wanted to compress the animation. The DCTV would interpret the output and show the right colours.

I remember my Amiga 3000/030@25Mhz barely decode MP3 in real time, let alone VCD MPEG.

Why use crap looking MPEG full of artifacts when you could show a nice and clean animation without artifacts? :-)

[amigadave]

@Hammer,

Hammer wrote:
Was the content MPEG (VCD) based?

No, it was just in DCTV format, images and probably run as an anim5.  I don't remember what animation software the guys were running, but the guys showing it at the Amiga show said that it was made with a DCTV and running from the hard drive.  The sound was perfectly synced and the picture quality was as good as any VHS tape of the time.  This must have been in 1989 or 1990 when that was unheard of on any other platform.  It was amazing to see at that time.  People were looking under the table and behind the booth looking for the VCR.

The mobility Radeon 9000 supports MPEG2 and resolutions beyond 1080p

Yes, I noted that modern graphics cards are far more capable than the DCTV and Amiga graphics were/are, but can a SAM440ep with your noted Radeon 9000 play 1080p movies from hard disk without dropping frames or losing sync with the soundtrack?  I know that the similarly CPU powered EFIKA running MorphOS2.1 cannot, or at least I have not been successful with mine using MPlayer.

So, my question, or suggestion is that perhaps some genius programmer, or hardware designer could create something similar to the DCTV to allow the SAM440ep and EFIKA to play 1080p movies from their hard drives.  The magic of the DCTV is that it could convert the very low bandwidth Amiga 3bit, or 4bit display into a composite display with 2.1 million colors that looked as good as any NTSC or PAL broadcast on your TV.  Since it was only at 3 or 4 bit depth, the meager powered Amigas could produce full speed animations with sound and imitate TV quality movies.

[Hammer]

PowerPC has a pretty decent SIMD instruction set called Altivec. It's better to build the next OS4 machine with a cpu that supports VMX/Altivec than using foreign cpus

The context was for SAM440 and 5200.

Why use crap looking MPEG full of artifacts when you could show a nice and clean animation without artifacts?

Compression ratio ~6:1 for DCTV...

ATI Radeon X1300/X1600
Lossless Z Compression (up to 48:1).
Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1) at all resolutions.

ATI Radeon HD HD 2600/3600/4550
Lossless Z & stencil compression (up to 128:1)
Lossless color compression (up to 8:1)

H.264/AVC includes lossless compression as well as lossy compression.

[jj]

I am probably missing something here, but wouldnt it look terrible at that sort of resolution. Im guessing it looked ok origianlly becuase it was such low resolution

[Fransexy_]

FPGAs anyone?  :idea:

[amigadave]

JJ wrote:
I am probably missing something here, but wouldnt it look terrible at that sort of resolution. Im guessing it looked ok origianlly becuase it was such low resolution

I am not saying use the same resolution as the old DCTV device, I am just saying that it would be great if some kind of device that used a similar method (Edit: not method, but got similar results that were 1080p), was available that would enable the SAM440ep and the EFIKA to display 1080p movies from their hard drives.  With todays powerful graphics cards, maybe it could be done in software instead of hardware.

[jj]

But they are already capabable, especially the sam

its the video playing software that is not up to scratch

[amigadave]

JJ wrote:
But they are already capabable, especially the sam

its the video playing software that is not up to scratch

Is it the software's fault?  I thought that the faster G4 AmigaOne's and Pegasos2's running the same software were capable and the fault was in the speed of the SAM and the EFIKA?

[Fab12]

AmigaDave,

Neither Efika nor Sam are able to play a 1080p h264 file (and far from it). You'd need some 1.5/2GHz G4 to do so, or a dedicated processing unit.

JJ,

I'm impatient to see a SAM playing a 1080p h264 file at full speed with some plugged fpga really...

Seriously, just stop dreaming.

At the moment, both dvplayer & mplayer for OS4 are about twice as slow as mplayer for MorphOS regarding h264 playback (they'll catch up when they are updated to current ffmpeg and have faster video output drivers). So I wouldn't even be surprised if an Efika wouldn't behave better than a SAM currently.

[leirbag28]

Come on folks.............the guy is obviously talking about a DIGITAL DCTV update.....no one is referring to actually making a COMPOSITE revised edition.


But anyway.............absoulutely pointless.............Why do computers struggle with HD content?  because the PC makers are brainless.

All we need is an NEXT GEN Amiga with BluRay and Custom Video chips like the PS3 and Removable chips for that matter so they can be upgraded.

If it were up to me I would insert twice the resolution capability of 1080p...............sure it will bring up the price...............but you will only have to buy 1 Amiga for the next 12 years...............how many times do PC and mac users buy new machines?  like every 3 years or so I estimate...probably less!  so they spend more money that it would cost us to shell out for an expensive Amiga.


Very very Verryyyyy simple formula for success.

You cant settle for less than HD content and no BluRay...............ReeeeeDik You Luss!

Amiga Inc is in pure limbo right now and has a severe lack of innovation and imagination.

[jj]

@ fab12

I never said anything about fpga I am not deluded.

@Rest

If the built in GPU of the SAM has hardwarde HD decoding, or you can add a GPU that does then the fault lies with the Software/graphics card drivers