| Title: | AMIGA NOTES |
| Notice: | Join us in the *NEW* conference - HYDRA::AMIGA_V2 |
| Moderator: | HYDRA::MOORE |
| Created: | Sat Apr 26 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Wed Feb 05 1992 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 5378 |
| Total number of notes: | 38326 |
Although this message requests wide distribution, I am making the
assumption (as should you) that this info is for "Digital Intenal
Use Only".
mt
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From: CINDYP::PICCICUTO 31-JUL-1991 15:02:20.41
To: Members of conference MULTI_MEDIA
CC:
Subj: New DECmedia product overview
Please find attached to this message an updated overview on the upcoming
Multimedia HW and SW products.
Important changes are:
- there will be 1 (one) DECaudio product!!
only the high-end product with distribution box will be productized
- 3MAX+ and 3MIN will offer Model TX 's with the 24-plane color frame buffer
whereas MAXine will offer a Multimedia Model with DECvideo/IN
- DECvideo/OUT is now part of the 2nd wave of products targetted for Q1 FY93
Also at the end of the overview you will find a list of potential functionality
for the wave 2 products.
!! Please distribute this update overview as widely as you can, to ensure
everybody gets updated on the late product strategy change to 1 DECaudio
product. !!
Have a nice day,
Guy
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Multimedia Overview
-------------------
HW Product Name: DECvideo & DECaudio Product Mgr: Guy Vancollie
Product: video & audio TURBOchannel Marketing Mgr: Jack Toto
boards for 3MAX, 3MIN, MAXine
SW Product Name: XMedia Tools V1 Product Manager: Nina Price
Product: audio and video enabling software Marketing Manager: Michel Gambier
for ULTRIX/UWS
Product announcement: Oct/Nov FY92 (UNIX Expo)
FCS: Q2/3 FY92
Current Phase : 2
For more information you can either become a member of the restricted notes
conference (LPSTCK::MULTI_MEDIA) by sending mail to Cindy Piccicuto at
WRKSYS::PICCICUTO or get a copy of the PID, now available on the VTX OPAL PID
menu.
Overall Product Description:
The first wave of DECmedia products are a set of TURBOchannel options and
Multimedia software tools which will make our high- performance RISC-based
DECstation 5000 and future TURBOchannel platforms Multimedia capable, thereby
providing Digital with an entry in the fast growing (CAGR 73%, 90-94)
Multimedia market.
Top priority for the first wave of DECmedia hardware products is
"TIME-TO-MARKET", as Digital has to establish itself as a participant in this
high visibility, leading edge segment of the desktop market.
Since Multimedia is becoming a critical success factor in the workstation
market, this set of products will support the revenue plans of the DECstation
5000/200, 3MAX+, 3MIN and MAXine platforms which are critical to Digital's
success in the RISC/UNIX workstation market.
The first wave of DECmedia hardware products consists of the TX frame buffer,
and the DECvideo and DECaudio products.
* TX: 24 plane color frame buffer (True color; no graphic
acceleration),
supports 1280 x 1024 monitors (both 66Hz and 72Hz versions)
supports 8-bit and 24-bit access mode for graphics
hardware cursor, occupies one TURBOchannel slot
packaged systems with the 24 plane color frame buffer will be
provided for 3MAX+ and 3MIN; they will be referred to as the
TX model
Collectively referred to as the DECvideo products are:
* DECvideo/PIP: daughter card to the TX frame buffer (Picture-In-
Picture),
provides:
- live NTSC, PAL or SECAM video in a window
at 30, resp. 25, frames/sec
- scaling from 1:1 to icon size
- frame grabbing
also the item which upgrades a TX board to
DECvideo/IN
* DECvideo/IN: TX frame buffer with DECvideo/PIP daughter card,
occupies one TURBOchannel slot
input signals: NTSC/PAL/Secam composite
S-Video
RGB
output signal is RGB
a packaged system with DECvideo/IN will be offered
for MAXine; it will be referred to as the
"Multimedia model"
The DECaudio product is:
* DECaudio single slot audio/signal processing TURBOchannel
option with a Motorola DSP 56001 and a distribution
box,
provides telephone-grade audio in & out, telephony
support and CD-quality audio out
consists of:
- DECaudio board, with telephone line and set
interface for US/Canada
- distribution box with:
. speaker, amplification, stereo volume/balance
control
. microphone, headphone and handset jacks
. telephone-grade (8 bit, 8KHz sampling) line
in & out
. CD-quality (dual channel 16 bit, 44.1KHz
sampling) stereo line out
. stereo headphone jack
. serial DSP port
(the ISDN 'S' line interface will be hidden functionality until
the appropriate software support becomes available; the serial
lines are no longer in the first release of the product)
The above hardware products are currently planned for the Q2/3 FY92 timeframe.
The first wave of DECmedia software will consist of XMedia Tools, audio and
video enabling software which assists software developers in building
distributed multimedia applications, or in adding audio and video components
to existing applications and documentation. A DECstation FaxServer will
be offered as a separate product.
An Audio/Video Runtime Kit will include drivers, servers, the Software
Motion Pictures player, sample applications and clips. The license for
this Kit will be included with the DECaudio and DECvideo options.
The Audio/Video Developer Kit adds on-line documentation (using hypermedia
techniques and including audio and video examples), audio and video
libraries, the Software Motion Pictures builder, plus tools to
functionality found in the Runtime Kit.
The DECstation FaxServer provides send fax and receive fax capability
to all RISC/ULTRIX DECstations. No hardware option is required,
although customers will need to purchase a qualified fax modem from an
outside vendor.
A Multimedia ISV program is being implemented initially targetting
software vendors in the following application areas:
- office and publishing
- research and science
- financial markets
as well as ISVs providing enabling applications for:
- multimedia authoring
- hyper-information
- animation
- multimedia database
Wave 2 of the DECmedia products are currently planned for the Q1 FY93 timeframe
and will potentially consist of the following items:
DECvideo/OUT : single slot TURBOchannel option
outputs a 640 by 480 pixel window to an outside video
peripheral, output signal is RGB
AV1-LC : provides live video frame capture, dither and compression
in real-time on a single-slot TURBOchannel option
features: . FMV capture
. JPEG compression/decompression
. dithering to 8 bits
. 32-bit DMA over TURBOchannel
DECaudio : upgraded to include the following functionality
ISDN 'S' line interface
serial lines
telephony support extended to additional countries
Xmedia Tools V2 for the OSF/1 and ACE environments with additional support for:
. a DSP toolkit
. text-to-speech
. video output
. additional hardware options
. ISDN
Video-teleconferencing software
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4955.1 | Boot Camp Monday Morning! | SMURF::COOLIDGE | Bayard, ULTRIX CSSE 381-0503 ZKO3 | Fri Aug 09 1991 17:26 | 60 |
For those of you in the Greater Maynard Area, there will be a
MULTIMEDIA BOOT CAMP/AWARENESS DAY on Monday, 12 August, from
0830 to 1615 in the General Doriot CR in the Mill. Don Gaubatz
will be the keynote speaker at 0840. Sorry for not posting it
sooner, but they're unannounced products that everyone knows
about, more or less. (I believe a program announcement was made
a while back, but anyway...)
MULTIMEDIA BOOT CAMP/AWARENESS DAY
DATE: 8/12/91
Place: General Doriot Conference Room, The Mill
Agenda:
8:30 Introduction Diane LaPointe
8:40 Keynote Speaker Don Gaubatz
9:00 Multimedia Market Jack Toto/Frank Paniagua
Focus and Competitive
Analysis
10:00 BREAK
10:15 DEMO/DECmedia SW Michel Gambier
Products
11:00 DECmedia HW Products Guy Vancollie
11:30 Multimedia SW/ISV Program Nina Price
12:00 LUNCH
12:45 DEC's Multimedia Technical John Morse
Strategy
1:15 Integrating Audio and Video Greg Wallace & CO.
Compression
2:15 BREAK
2:30 Object Oriented Networking Brian Markey
3:00 PAWS Advanced Development Peter Davis
Program
3:30 Multimedia Topics in CRA Tom Levergood
4:15 End/Goodbye
| |||||
| 4955.2 | Has DEC changed it's tune on the AMIGA? | RTL::DMULLEN | Dan Mullen, Run-Time Libraries. | Mon Aug 12 1991 10:55 | 9 |
Months ago I attended a general "what's DEC doing w/ multi media" presentation given by Jack Toto (mentioned in .0 and .1). The presentation discussed a lot of unannounced products so I didn't say anything sooner. One thing that did irk me was the way Jack grouped the Amiga with Nintendo and Atari in the "toy" market slice. Now that the 3000 has had more exposure I wonder if they're taking the Amiga more seriously. I doubt it. ..Dan | |||||
| 4955.3 | $.02 from a Maintainability Engineer ;-) | SMURF::COOLIDGE | Bayard, ULTRIX CSSE 381-0503 ZKO3 | Mon Aug 12 1991 13:36 | 22 |
Well, I can't speak for any of the product managers or engineers who
are actually responsible for the projects/products involved, but I
think I understand the cause for your perception of their attitude.
If you check the SPD for ULTRIX, you'll see that we specify a *minimum*
memory size of 6MB for VAXen, and 8MB for MIPS/RISC. If you think of
the VAX and the MC68000 being *very* roughly comparable (i.e., both
CISC's, but yeah, different implementations in each family have
different attributes which affect performance), then what do you
suppose the relative price and the relative performance of a top-end
Amiga 3000 will look like compared to a stripped VAX? To me, their
market overlap is minimal.
I don't want to go down any ratholes over size of the operating system,
which one's a pig, etc. But, if Commodore were to market a 68040-based
machine with memory expansion capability to 32MB (or more), then I
think it might be a different story. Perhaps someone in Desktop
Marketing could add some more to this, but I think it's a perception,
right or wrong, that we're in different markets... at the moment.
| |||||
| 4955.4 | Amiga sighting (almost) | KALI::PLOUFF | Devoted to his Lawn | Mon Aug 12 1991 14:50 | 5 |
Some months ago Multimedia Engineering in the Mill was throwing out an
empty packing box marked "Amiga Model 2500." So there is some official
Amiga awareness at DEC.
Wes
| |||||
| 4955.5 | point/counterpoint | WHAMMY::spodaryk | For three strange days... | Mon Aug 12 1991 17:41 | 23 |
re: .3 > different attributes which affect performance), then what do you > suppose the relative price and the relative performance of a top-end > Amiga 3000 will look like compared to a stripped VAX? To me, their > market overlap is minimal. I'm not so convinced. I haven't seen an A3000/UX, but a '030 Amiga can easily compete with low-end VAXstation 3100's, and probably beat them in terms of X-performance, etc. The overlap is pretty close, and the price/performance is in the Amiga's favor. Especially now, that you seemingly need 12M to run Motif properly. Our RISC boxes can post some impressive numbers, but they too require vast amounts of RAM and disk. An '030 may not crank out 25 MIPS, but in terms of responsiveness, I find that even my '020 based Amiga can provide response that my DS 5000/200 can't always match (ie. when paging/swapping). However, for compute intensive applications - I'll take the RISC! Steve | |||||
| 4955.6 | They do have an Amiga | AMIGA::RIES | OS/2 = Half an Operating System | Tue Aug 13 1991 00:21 | 5 |
The Multimedia group does have an A2500/30 with a Toaster. I helped
them put it together. They were mostly interested in the Toaster
rather than the Amiga itself. Sigh.
Frank
| |||||
| 4955.7 | Multimedia *multivendor* request in LPSTCK::MULTI_MEDIA conference | TERSE::ROBINSON | Mon Nov 11 1991 12:51 | 33 | |
A Becky Jacobs in the multi-media notes file is looking for info, and we
should provide some. So far there is only PC and MAC stuff in response to this
request:
<<< LPSTCK::USER1:[NOTES$LIBRARY]MULTI_MEDIA.NOTE;1 >>>
-< Multi-Media >-
================================================================================
Note 176.0 Hardware configuration recommendations for multimedia? 5 replies
DBSALF::JACOBS "Becky Jacobs, DBS, 343-0573, ALF1-3/M25" 23 lines 30-OCT-1991 14:32
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I am in the process of putting together a capital list of hardware we need.
My goal is to identify the hardware configuration needed to support a multimedia
multivendor environement.
We already have a 5000 (but a SLOW one) so my first question is:
1. What is the ultimate (or at least reasonable) 5000 model configuration
(memory etc) needed to support multimedia (DECmedia products).
We also already have a MAC IIci and a DECstation 333c.
2. What audio/video boards and peripherals(speakers, microphones, etc.) are
recommended for making these systems multimedia capable?
Please point me to the write notes/conferences if this is not appropriate. I
tried to search this conference, but couldn't find any specific topics on
configuration recommendations. If there are sales support materials that help,
point me to them. I have printed out the sales update articles for the DECmedia
products.
I'm also interested in color scanners, but will contact the imaging folks about
the latest info there (I did some research last year, but am sure there is new
stuff on the market...)
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