MELBOURNE AMIGA EXPO 93 REPORT 

                          By Joe Hanna-Rivero 


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   Unless you live in Sydney where the annual World of Commodore shows take
  place, the rest of Australia is pretty much left in the cold when it comes
  to Amiga shows. Recently though, Melbourne hosted an Amiga Expo 93 show
  that with any luck may also become an annual event. Though nothing to
  match the scale of the Sydney WOC show, it was nonetheless an important
  event for Amiga users in the Melbourne area. The show was sponsored by
  Power Peripherals (distributors of the excellent GVP range of peripherals
  in Australia) and Commodore.  It took place on the 26 March at the Malvern
  Town Hall, which is often the venue for a popular monthly computer market.
  It's not a very large venue, but was adequate to accommodate the
  various exhibitors displaying their wares.

   I got there a half hour before the opening time of 10am after making the
  45 minute drive from the other side of town and found quite a few people
  already lined up to hand over their 5 dollars (or $2.50 for children) to
  see Melbourne's first Amiga show.

   Once inside, I found a very large stand from Power Peripherals themselves
  and had a chat to the manager Niv Novak who happens to be an old friend of
  mine from way back. Beneath the glass displays were many of GVP's
  excellent range of products, including the new 030/CoPro/RAM board for the
  A1200 guaranteed to turbo-charge the already speedy new Commodore
  offspring.  Also on show were many of their hard drive controller boards,
  the IV24 graphics card and many other useful bits. Several staff members
  were busy impressing onlookers with demonstrations of GVP distributed
  software like Image-FX (like ADPRO with the addition of morphing and
  warping features) and the already well acclaimed SCALA MM200 which was
  running on a 1200 and displaying pretty pictures and animations to the
  accompaniment of a snazzy soundtrack.

   Several of Melbourne's biggest Amiga retailers made their presence felt
  with large stands packed with much hardware, peripherals and software.  One
  was Computa Magic and they had many hardware and software specials for the
  show. They had an impressive video running a demo of Real 3D V2.0 which
  judging from what I saw is one for the pros. Its biggest new feature is
  life like animation of joint movement such as fingers bending and arms
  moving around.

   Also there was Maxwells, which is probably one of the biggest Amiga
  retailers in Australia, and several of their staff were inundated by a
  plethora of queries and price quotes. Judging by the number of people I
  saw walking away with monitors and computers under their arms, they must
  have had some healthy sales. For some reason I kept coming back to this
  stand, maybe it was the stunning blonde behind the cash register.

   MVB Computers also had a large stand with several highly souped up Amigas
  running impressive demos. One Amiga 3000, fitted with a GVP IV24 board and
  linked to a video camera, was showing off its PIP (Picture-In-Picture)
  capabilities by diplaying live video of passers by in a small window on top
  of a running SCALA demo. Impressive to say the least.  A super-charged
  Amiga 2000 with Opalvision was doing some impressive animations of a flying
  sequence through a circuit board.  I was kept glued to a video tape
  demonstration of some 24 bit mini movies done on the Amiga. One was a STAR
  WARS type sequence with enough realism to match special effects in films of
  not too many years ago.

   All three retailers had the 030 version of the A4000 on sale which is
  fitted with a 120M hard drive and 4MB of RAM. Prices varied from $2800 to
  $2950 but some of the retailers were offering trade-in prices on your
  existing Amiga, anything from $300 for an Amiga 500 with expansion RAM to
  about $1200 for an A2000 system with hard drive and monitor. I was
  tempted, but resisted because I happen to like my 2000 and with the
  forthcoming AGA chipset upgrade and cheap 040 boards (try $1100 for an 040
  with 1MB RAM) there's still hope for it yet. Failing that, I await the
  next generation of Amigas with the AAA (24 bit) chipset and DSP (Digital
  Signal Processor) around the corner.

   Anyway, back to the show. The main stage of the hall was taken up by
  Opalvision where they had an impressive colour projection system (one of
  only two in Australia apparently) which was showing eye-opening Opalvision
  demonstrations like animations and pictures. Also, there were several
  informative tutorials for both beginner and advanced OpalPaint users, a
  demonstration of the latest version of OpalPaint (V2.0) and question and
  answer sessions about the OpalVision system. The stage was packed for most
  of the show indicating the level of interest in this product.

   Another popular stand was that of Commercial Productions Australia which
  specialises in high end video equipment like single frame recorders and
  video editing equipment. They also do productions and presentations for TV
  stations and companies. An eye-catching video tape of some of their work
  played in a loop and few people who saw it failed to be impressed.
  Especially a sequence where a champagne glass magically filled with pink
  champagne and then suddenly morphed into a beer mug which again filled with
  the amber stuff we all love, and this in turn changed into yet another
  glass.

   Tucked away in a corner was Adelaide based GSOFT's stand. GSOFT is known
  for its sampling hardware and software and had special show prices on offer
  for Audio Engineer and other sampling packages as well as the Floptical
  drive (which I feel is missing its market due to its high price). They
  also distribute several software packages like the Australian Graphic
  Atlas, TurboPrint Professional and some other local products.

   Among the interesting new products on sale at the show was the Retina
  board which is a full 24 bit graphic board a little less powerful than
  Opalvision due to the lack of an encoded PAL or YC output which will affect
  direct output to video. As it currently stands it only outputs RGB, but
  the low price of around $700 means it will find its own market.
  Interestingly the board also works as a graphic accelerator and
  de-interlacer and actually speeds up window redraws and other Workbench
  operations so this added bonus makes the price even more attractive. It's
  bundled with a paint program called VDPaint which is a cutdown but
  nonetheless powerful version of the acclaimed TVPaint used on the Harlequin
  board.

   Cheap software and hardware buys at the show included Professional Page
  3.0 bundled with Professional Draw V2.0 for around $120 which although
  superseded by the current versions, is still a cheap entry into DTP and can
  make the upgrade path to the new versions attractive.  One dealer had an
  A2320 board which is the A2000 de-interlacer for about $170 (they were over
  $300 originally). But one has to expect that peripherals like this drop
  markedly in price due to the A1200.

   That takes care of the major exhibitors but let's mention the smaller
  groups who made an appearance at the show. The Melbourne Amiga User Group
  was there with a PD library service, recruiting new members and selling
  copies of its newsletter come magazine with the highly original name
  "Workbench".

   A company, the name of which escapes me was promoting the CDTV through
  discounted copies of CD&G compact discs which are those that have pictures
  as well as the music track. Another nice lady behind this stand...

   Michael Spiteri, the famed adventurer from the Australian Commodore and
  Amiga Review magazine had a small stand, taking subscriptions and selling
  back copies and annuals of the same as well as his own adventure hint
  books.  Next door to him was a PD library running demos of some fabulous
  European demos with MTV style effects and loud techno music.

   I spent the best part of 4 hours at the show making sure I hadn't missed
  anything of interest (especially the above mentioned ladies!) and by mid
  afternoon the place was getting quite crowded. I don't know how many
  people turned up throughout the day but I'm sure it would have been several
  thousand.

   Overall, my impression was that the show was a success and that there's a
  good chance it will be repeated in a much bigger way and in larger premises
  (the Exhibition building would be nice). But heck, what can we complain
  about, any Amiga only show in Melbourne is nice to have, amongst all the
  big PC shows that dominate the computer scene here.



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