4]-------------------------------------------------- 3]MORTON'S MUSINGS: CDTV Review . . . And Other News 3]By Morton A. Kevelson 4]-------------------------------------------------- 3]I GOT DEE CDTV What does CDTV really mean? As readers of this publication, we are well aware that CDTV signifies Commodore Dynamic Total Vision. For the rest of the population, which Commodore hopes will buy vast quantities of CDTVs, these four letters will probably signify the combination of the common audio compact disc and the all-pervasive television. If nothing else, compact disc television conjures up a more accurate image of CDTV then the nebulous acronym that Commodore has come up with. I personally suspect this was Commodore's original intent. With CDTV, Commodore has done a superb job of combining an Amiga computer with a CD-ROM reader in an innocuous, easily set-up package, that unsuspecting computerphobes will welcome into their homes. Other than the Commodore name, there is nothing on the CDTV front panel to distinguish it from the dozens of compact disc players which presently fill dealers' shelves. CDTV's 17-inch width and 13-inch depth perfectly matches the other audio components in my system, and its 3-1/2 inch height is slightly on the short side. Unlike most compact disc players, CDTV's disc loading mechanism is not a slide-out drawer. Instead, the compact discs must be placed in a separate caddy, which resembles and oversized floppy disk, which is then slid into a slot on the front panel. A push-button on the front panel manually ejects the caddy when you are done. CDTV does not have the ability to automatically eject discs. Some caution must be observed when ejecting the caddy; an excess of enthusiasm can easily project the caddy with disc across the room. Juggling compact discs, jewel boxes and the CDTV caddy became a minor problem at times. Of the seven CDTV titles I have received as of this writing, only three came with their own caddies: World Vista, Dr. Wellman and the CDTV welcome disc included with the player. I believe all CDTV software developers should consider providing their software in caddies as opposed to the jewel boxes that are used for audio compact discs. Caddies do have one disadvantage as compared to jewel boxes; they have no place to store the informative folders that are usually provided with compact discs. Now here is an opportunity for some minor innovation in the packaging of CDTV software. 3]OUTSIDE CDTV CDTV's front panel is cleaner and simpler than that of the typical compact disc player. All advanced operating functions are accessed via the video display. The on/off push-button is on the left, directly above a standard headphone jack. The compact disc caddy slot, which is to the right of the power switch, is followed by a digital display which shows the time of day in 12-or 24-hour format and the current audio compact disc track number. The right end of the panel contains eight buttons which control the start, stop, pause, forward and reverse track skip functions for audio compact discs. Two of these buttons control the volume of the audio output at the headphone jack and at the RF output connector to the television. A single button switches the RF signal between CDTV's output and the antenna signal. The reset button performs the same function as the Control-Amiga-Amiga key combination on any Amiga computer. The back panel, which sports no fewer than 14 connectors, is far more imposing than the front panel. Only the power connector and the RF connector are actually needed to place the CDTV into service. From right to left, the connectors in the top row include the standard Amiga RGB, parallel, serial and disk drive ports. These are followed by the left and right RCA type audio output jacks. The next two connectors are subminiature DIN types for a wired remote keyboard and a mouse or joystick. Optional infrared "bricks" will also be available for wireless operation of the keyboard and the mouse or joystick. It should also be possible to build an inexpensive adapter which will allow for the connection of an Amiga 1000 or Amiga 2000 keyboard to the back panel's keyboard connector. The CDTV's power connector is located right below the keyboard jack. Below the RGB and parallel port connectors is the RF output panel. This is actually a video expansion card which can be easily extracted by removing two screws. The supplied video card provides composite video output, RF audio/video output to channel 3 or 4 and S-Video output. The latter separates the color and luminance portions of the video signal for greater resolution. I found the composite video output provided excellent color images for all CDTV applications with the exception of 80-column Amiga text. The RF audio/video output provides good images within the limitations of this transmission channel. The audio signal from the RF port is a monophonic combination of the left and right channels. To get true hi-fi stereo you will have to use the separate audio connectors. I also tried out the S-Video and RGB outputs on an Amiga 1084 RGB monitor. The RGB output was identical to what I normally see on my Amiga 2000. For some images, S-Video output gave even better results than the RGB connection with stronger colors and higher contrast. Next to the video slot is an expansion port covered by a blank plate held in place by a pair of Phillips head screws. A 30-pin, printed circuit type, edge card connector is set back about four inches from the back panel. Expansion cards about three by four inches inches can fit into this slot. These dimensions are somewhat restrictive as compared to the 86-pin and 100- pin slots provided on the Amiga 500/1000 and Amiga 2000 computers. One of the devices planned for this port is a SCSI host adapter for an external hard drive. Left of the expansion port are in and out MIDI connectors. These are for use with MIDI instruments in conjunction with CDTV's ability to play CD+MIDI encoded discs. The dimensions of CDTV's infrared remote are about 8 by 2-1/2 inches, about the same size as other remote controls in my collection. With only 28 push-buttons the CDTV remote is actually one of the less complicated units. CDTV's remote is designed for two-handed operation. The left hand manipulates a cluster of four curser or arrow keys. The right hand operates a pair of push-buttons labeled A and B. The push-buttons correspond to the left and right mouse buttons that veteran Amiga users are accustomed to. In fact, the cursor keys and the A and B buttons are enough to handle all of the CDTV's application software that I have used. These buttons will also emulate all of the Amiga's mouse functions. The central part of the remote control contains a numeric keypad with escape and enter buttons and four basic functions for operating CDTV's compact disc player mode. There is also a genlock button, a CDTV versus TV video button and a JOY/MOUSE button. The latter places the remote control into joystick or mouse mode. The last press of the JOY/MOUSE button is remembered by the remote and not by CDTV. Keep in mind that if the JOY/MOUSE button is accidentally pressed, the CDTV may fail to respond to the remote. The power button on the remote will only work if the manual power button is pressed on the CDTV. A pair of volume buttons for the headphone jack are also provided on the remote control. 3]INSIDE CDTV Under CDTV's black sheet metal cover lurks an Amiga, a CD-ROM drive and a switching power supply. The entire package is force-ventilated by small fan, located behind the power supply, whose susurration was barely audible in a quiet living room. Although the board layout was unfamiliar, I was able to locate and identify a number of familiar faces, including the 68000 microprocessor, a Kickstart 1.3 ROM, the one megabyte Fatter Agnus chip, the Paula and Denise chips and of course one megabyte of system RAM. The clearance between the main circuit board and the top cover are minimal so do not expect to see any internally mounted expansion devices. Due to the complexity of the interconnecting cables and the integrated construction of the front and back panels with the main chassis, I did not risk disassembling the CDTV down to the CD-ROM drive. 3]USING CDTV Hooking up CDTV takes only a few minutes. The hardest part was finding a spare outlet for the power plug. The main difference between CDTV and a conventional compact disc player is that you have to turn on the television in order to access all of its functions. You can play audio compact discs without the television, but you will be flying blind. CDTV will let you start, stop and skip tracks; however, its digital display does not indicate which track is being played, nor does it provide the timing information which is provided by most compact disc players. When CDTV is operating as an audio compact disc player, the full fidelity of 44,000, 16 bit samples per second per channel is available. When CDTV runs what is really Amiga mode, the usual limitations on sampled sound apply. The advantage of using Amiga sampled sound is that at the slower sampling rates, many hours of real sampled sound, along with detailed graphics and the controlling software can be placed on a compact disc. Full fidelity audio compact discs are limited to about 70 minutes of music. With the television turned on, the audio compact disc control screen automatically appears when a caddy loaded with an audio disc is inserted into the slot. All of the audio compact disc playback functions, which are normally found on high-end audio compact disc players, are available on CDTV's control screen. The upper left quarter of the screen is devoted to a whimsical representation of the laser playing mechanism and the upper right quarter contains a calendar grid representation of the available audio tracks. Although the calendar only has room for 20 tracks, it will scroll to provide access to additional tracks. The image of the laser playing mechanism actually positions itself relative to the picture of the compact disk so as to correspond to the actual position of the laser as it plays the disc. The bottom half of the screen contains the compact disc controls, including a scan mode which plays the first 10 seconds of each track and a randomizer which plays back the tracks in a different order every time it is used. You also have the option of customizing the playback sequence. The on- screen, four-mode, time counter can be used to show elapsed time or remaining time for the current selection of the entire disc. Any segment of the disc can also be selected to loop continuously. You can activate the CDTV's CD+Graphics or CD+MIDI mode. CD+Graphics and CD+MIDI are recent additions to the audio compact disc format. To an ordinary compact disc player, the CD+ discs do not look any different than any other audio compact disc. In fact, the CD+ discs can contain the same amount of music as a conventional disc. Encoded along with the audio data is single frame image data on the CD+Graphics or MIDI playback data on the CD+MIDI discs. Switching to the CD+ mode activates the CDTV's front panel track number display. However, all of the advanced functions, which are on the compact disc control screen, are lost. When you play a CD+Graphics audio compact disc you will also be able to watch the sequence of images play back on the video display while you listen to the music. A CD+MIDI audio compact disc will let you supplement the recorded audio with sounds generated by a MIDI instrument hooked up to the CDTV's MIDI port. Both CD+G and CD+MIDI audio compact discs are new formats. Since the players for these formats are not yet widely distributed, I found that store personnel were not aware as to which selections in their stock offered these features. I also found that not all compact discs were properly labeled when the CD+G coding was included. For example, Fleetwood Mac's latest release, Behind the Mask, contains some excellent graphics as well the complete lyrics to all of the songs yet the copy of this disk I received from the BMG Compact Disc club did not have any indication it was a CD+G disk. It was only after I spotted a complete package on the store shelves and then tried out the disc on CDTV that I found the graphics. 3]CDTV as CDTV Setting up CDTV is simpler than hooking up a VCR. Just plug in the power cord, connect the antenna to the RF switch/modulator, plug one end of the cable into the CDTV and the other end into the television's antenna jack. For hi-fi stereo playback, hook up the supplied audio cables to the auxiliary input on a stereo receiver. If you want to use the direct video, RGB or S- Video connections, you will have to provide your own cables. In the absence of a suitable disc, CDTV first displays a logo screen and after a set time delay, switches to a bouncing CDTV emblem. This prevents burn-in of the screen phosphors. Pressing any button on the remote control brings up the CDTV setup screen. From the setup screen you customize CDTV for your operating environment. Settings include the date and time, screen centering, interlace toggle for video taping, and the time delay before the bouncing CDTV logo appears. The bouncing logo will appear whenever the remote remains quiescent for the preset length of time. You can also choose from 14 languages including American English, Danish, German, English, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Suomi, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Other than the initial hookup and installation instruction, no written documentation is provided. Instead, the CDTV Welcome Disc provides a complete, interactive description and instruction on using CDTV, samples of the available software and a description of optional peripherals. It is the Welcome Disk that informs the unsuspecting user that CDTV may actually be an Amiga computer. The absence of a written manual will be frustrating to veteran Amiga users who are looking for a specific piece of information. On the other hand, the Welcome Disc is ideally suited for the new user. After mastering the six basic buttons via the Welcome Disc, using CDTV is simply a matter of inserting the proper disc, sitting back and following the on-screen instructions. The immense capacity of the CD-ROM leaves plenty of room for detailed, interactive instructions right on the disc. Most programs make extensive use of digitized vocal instructions as well. 3]CDTV SOFTWARE As of this writing I have worked with seven actual CDTV titles, one of which was the CDTV Welcome Disc. Though all these titles offered much more, in terms of graphics and extensive sampled sound, than comparable floppy disk based titles, it seemed to me that CDTV software is still in the early stages of development. After all, it will take some time to generate 650 megabytes of CDTV-specific software, graphics and sound. Nevertheless, the quality of the software, as well as its ease of use, was such that our eight-year-old CDTV software applications expert was willing to monopolize the living room television set for as long as we would let her. Here is a brief overview of the currently available CDTV titles. Merit Software's Classic Board Games - Play video chess, checkers and backgammon with both overhead two-dimensional and three-dimensional views available for all of the games. You can play a human opponent or choose the difficulty level of a computer opponent. Merit Software's All Dogs Go To Heaven - An introductory level fill-in the color paint program with fixed images from the Disney movie. Each image is accompanied by a digitized sound track which cannot be bypassed. The images are presented in the same order every time the program is used. Tiger Media's The Case of The Cautious Condor - Take a classic text and graphics computer adventure game, completely replace the on screen text with extensive digitized voice over, expand the number and variety of the full screen graphics and add a 10-minute illustrated introduction to the story and you will have The Case of The Cautious Condor. The game takes 30 minutes to play during which you explore a massive airplane searching for clues and encountering the suspects. If you cannot identify the murderer, you can come back and try again while bypassing the introduction. Different clues, suspects and conversations are presented on subsequent plays, and it should take several tries to solve the mystery. Xiphias' Time Table of History and Innovation - An interactive database of graphics, sounds, maps, stories and other tidbits of interesting information from the big bang to the present. Since reference texts are provided, this disc can be a good starting place for a term paper at the intermediate school level. Applied Optical Media Corporation's World Vista - A multimedia atlas and data base, similar to a world almanac on disc. Maps, data, images, music and language samples are included, however, not all data is available for every country and the samples that are included are far from comprehensive. For example, for the United States, city maps are included for Los Angeles and San Francisco but not for New York City. The maps are scanned images which do not let you measure distances by clicking on two points. Maps must be scrolled, as they are larger than the screen. 3]CDTV AS AN AMIGA To convert CDTV into an Amiga computer, all that needs to be done is hook up a floppy disk drive. I borrowed an early model A1010 from the Amiga 1000 and did just that. When a floppy drive is present, CDTV will check it first for a bootable floppy disk. If a bootable floppy is present, CDTV goes into the familiar Amiga mode. In this case the CD-ROM player appears as CD0: which can be accessed as read-only floppy or hard drive. In addition to the CDTV programs, I was also able to access HyperMedia Concepts' Fred Fish Collection on CD ROM. However, Xetec's Fish & More collections were not compatible with CDTV. In the last six months, two Amiga based CD-ROM systems have appeared and they already have compatibility problems. Of course, Xetec's system as brought to market before CDTV's specifications were finalized. On the plus side, Xetec has been able to get many CDTV titles to run on its Amiga-based CD-ROM system by providing suitable AmigaDOS command files. CDTV was unable to read the PC-compatible clip art collections on CD-ROM that can be accessed by the Xetec CD-ROM reader. I expect both of these compatibility problems could be resolved by a suitable floppy disc-based driver program, though it remains to be seen if this will actually be done. The lack of a full, alphanumeric, keyboard limited the usable Amiga software to applications which can be run with only the digits 0 through nine or to programs which can be operated via the mouse or joystick. The one megabyte total memory, all of which is chip RAM, also restricts the range of Amiga applications that can be used on CDTV. If you do operate CDTV in Amiga mode, take some time to explore the CDTV Welcome Disc. You will find a variety of interesting files, including superseded images, invoices, contracts, credits, some off-beat humor and the Action Sequence Command Language (ASL) with complete documentation. ASL is a declarative language, designed for CDTV, which is used to develop simple graphical presentations for CDTV in script form. 3]CONCLUSION Commodore has done a superb job of merging an Amiga computer with the massive data storage capacity of the CD-ROM system. With a 650-megabyte storage capacity to work with, CDTV software has access to the graphics and digitized sounds that work so well on the Amiga. The CDTV Welcome Disc and this first crop of CDTV software do a remarkable job of shielding the user from any possible association with the dreaded computer. Although veteran Amiga users, such as ourselves, may initially find the CDTV interface rather cumbersome, the uninitiated should welcome its interactive aspects. Present Amiga users may feel a bit put out by CDTV. Other than the external floppy drive, neither of the existing keyboards from the Amiga 1000 or the Amiga 2000 nor the mouse or a standard joystick can be hooked up without an adapter. Although Commodore has been showing a prototype CDTV for the Amiga 500, it still seems to be a long way from its release. The prototype Amiga 500 CDTV connects to the Amiga 500's expansion port where it will conflict with any peripherals that may already be there. An internally mounted CDTV for the Amiga 2000 has not been announced as of this writing. The bottom line is that we would have all been pleased if Commodore had kept hardware and software compatibility in mind when CDTV was designed. The question still remains: Will CDTV succeed? With the exception of price, CDTV has a lot going for it in the consumer market. It may turn out that competition, or the lack of it, will ultimately determine CDTV's fate. 3]DELUXE PAINT IV Perhaps it will be Deluxe Paint IIII or maybe 4. Electronic Arts is definitely working on the next release of Deluxe Paint which is expected to appear this Fall. Details are not available at this time but I will keep you posted. 3]GRAVITY STRIKES AGAIN When installing a hard drive system, be sure to format the drive while it is oriented in the position you will be using it. I recently installed a Seagate ST1096N in the Amiga 2000's 5 1/4 inch drive bay. When I vertically mounted the drive as a hard card, I experienced a large number of read errors. Replacing the unit in the drive bay cleared up the problem. Seagate's customer support confirmed their drives should be formatted while in the position that they will be used. I suspect other drive manufacturers will have similar restrictions. This could present a problem when you buy a complete system from an Amiga developer that formats the drive before shipping. 3]FRESH FISH HyperMedia Concepts' The Fred Fish Collection on CD ROM, $69.95, which I mentioned last month should be updated by the time you read this. The second release will include Fred Fish disks 1-480 and it will autoboot on CDTV. The compressed disk section has been also been changed from ZIP to LZH. According to a HyperMedia Concepts spokesperson, The Fred Fish Collection on CDTV can be integrated into an Amiga network using PARNET on Fish disk number 400. PARNET lets you network Amigas via the parallel port. 3]DEVELOPERS MENTIONED HyperMedia Concepts, Inc. P.O. Box 85303 Racine, WI 53408 Phone (414) 632-3766 4]END OF TEXT