Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!usc!orion.cf.uci.edu!uci-ics!zardoz!tgate!ka3ovk!drilex!axiom!linus!mbunix!rad From: rad@mbunix.mitre.org (Richard A. Dramstad) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: MicroTV for your MacII ($395) (sorta long) Keywords: on-screen video, neat stuff Message-ID: <63255@linus.UUCP> Date: 11 Aug 89 21:41:02 GMT References: <4008@shlump.nac.dec.com> <27582@srcsip.UUCP> Sender: news@linus.UUCP Reply-To: rad@mbunix (Dramstad) Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, Mass. Lines: 93 In article <27582@srcsip.UUCP> mnkonar@src.honeywell.com (Murat N. Konar) writes: >In article <4008@shlump.nac.dec.com> phil@vaxphw.dec.com (Phil Hunt) writes: >>It is amazing how the minute you add the word 'computer' to a discussion, >>$400 becomes 'low price'!! >> >>How much would YOU pay for a 3" B&W television that is not a computer >>television. I mean, I have seen Sony Watchmans for $59 with 3" screens > >If they support copy and paste I'll take one! :^) This has been an interesting thread of discussion. I spent about twenty minutes in the Aapps booth at MacWorld on Tuesday, and then spent a while longer in their hospitality suite at the Marriott that evening. (I must say, it was a *nice* hospitality suite...) Aapps was accepting orders at the show, and there were a lot of people throwing credit cards at them ready to order, even though it's at least a couple months before they make their initial production runs. It's mostly off the shelf components, which accounts for the relatively low price (for a computer board). There's a lot of curiosity about this (soon to be) product, so I'll throw my two cents worth of observations in: Yeah, it supports cut and paste. Bring up the MicroTV application, use the mouse to tune in the channel you want, hit the space bar, and Judge Wopner's (sp.?) face shows up on your clipboard to paste into your law course home work. (Make sure your word processor can handle/print gray scale; MacPaint-like one-bit deep programs need not apply.) The MTV card (the Aapps folks had on their "I want my M(icro)TV" buttons at MacWorld) has audio out, too. It's cable ready, and will also accept input from other video sources. At the show, they were using a laser disk with Top Gun on it; in the suite they were using a Sony Walkman VCR/TV for input, along with a video camera. Doing a paste from a videotape and then doing the same from the live camera shots makes for some interesting documents. The display gets refreshed about 28 times/second (less than TV), but was viewable. The video refresh stops/slows whenever there's a Macintosh interrupt, and there are a lot of those happening on a Mac, of course, when you're doing anything other than just watching the MicroTV. (Just doing a mouse down freezes the video; other activities like disk IO probably does the same.) When I asked, the Aapps folks said you could put more than one card in (the software probably doesn't support that yet; I don't know), but each card while running takes about 30% of the Mac's CPU (I think we're talking plain Mac II here, not 68030 Macs), so there are some limitations -- I don't think you want to have a Mac with a video card and 5 MicroTVs just so you can watch five channels at once. >But seriously folks, the other cards I've heard of that can do this kind >of thing were in the 1 to 3 thousand dollar range. Some of the cards you might be referring to include the Mass Micro Color Space II/Color Space FX boards or the Orange Micro Personal Vision frame grabber. Yeah, they're around $2K, like you said. MicroTV really addresses a different market, though, I'd say. The {Mass,Orange} Micro cards are for relatively high quality color video production; I don't think 128x96 grey scale pixels falls into the same category. The MicroTV Professional is still a long way from this type of system, too. So, how would you use the MicroTV? Yeah, you could have your soap operas come on automatically (isn't there some Mac init that will launch a program at a certain time? In this case, "program" takes on a whole new meaning...), but Phil Hunt is right, you can get a lot of TV these days for ~$400 -- big screen monitor with stereo, etc., and the MicroTV is not how you'd want to watch Star Wars (Casablanca maybe, but not colorized). Some more far out possibilities were raised: Use the MicroTV with a videodisk to provide on-screen video help under program control. Or, use Timbuktu (which only sends changes, not the entire screen image), to remote your video, which might be coming from the camera sitting on top of your Mac aimed at you. Videophone, anyone? Think of the possibilities for user support! I think the MicroTV is one of those technologies that seem like a toy at first, but one that will really grow on people, once they figure out how to use it. They didn't show the SE version or the Professional version at MacWorld, as far as I know. To avoid the obvious question, Aapps' phone # is (800)446-6393, or in CA it's (415) 961-4033. They're in Mountain View. >Murat N. Konar Honeywell Systems & Research Center, Camden, MN >mnkonar@SRC.honeywell.com (internet) {umn-cs,ems,bthpyd}!srcsip!mnkonar(UUCP) Dick Dramstad rad@mitre.org Disclaimer: No endorsement, but lots of interest. Your mileage may vary.