🚀 go-pugleaf

Both DVI and CDI were demo'd at the CD ROM conference, both were impressive.

Microsoft, Lotus, Intel and RCA/GE announced that they would would be
supporting DVI (from RCA/GE) as the standard.

The DVI demo looked good but you could see some problems when the image
changed very fast.  Their subjects seemed to be choosen so that only a small
part of the image would change (people spinning/walking/running/jumping).
The demo was basically straight "movie" type video, little interaction
was shown in the main demo.  They also demo'd their live video editing. If 
I remember correctly they called it ELV (Edit Level Video).  Pretty good, it
allowed you to capture video from a hand held camcorder (or equiv.) and store
it on hard disk for play back.

The CDI demo was a bit different.  It stressed the interactive nature of the
Philips/SONY standard.  Fewer moving images and the ones they did have
were small (no surprise).  There was a music video of Olivia Neutron Bomb, it
sounded great and the picture was acceptable.  They also had cartoons,
still screen pictures and some special effects (fades, wipes, multilingual).

To make the DVI stuff work takes an IBM PC, video monitor and 5 full size
cards crammed with RAM and VLSI, that is just for playback.  To do development
requires an additional 2 piggy back digitizing boards.  Someone I met
on the shuttle bus told me that they wanted $20000 for the boards.

My impression was that all though DVI could produce more and better 
quality images, that CDI was more advanced from an interactive point of view.  
CDI also seems futher along in terms of becoming a consumer product.  
DVI looks like it is in dire need of some input from the marketing boys.  
I saw little in the way of creative applications or thought about the
use of DVI technology.  The two demos reflected this, one could easily imagine
more advanced applications of the type seen in the CDI demo but this was
a little more difficult for DVI.  This may not be a consequence of the
technology itself but it may drastically affect its success.

It looks like the Americans (DVI) against the world (CDI) again.  






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Daniel A. Ford 					daford@watdragon.uucp
CS Department                         daford%watdragon@waterloo.csnet
U. of Waterloo       daford%watdragon%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa