🚀 go-pugleaf

patti@hose2.hf.intel.com (Patti Beadles) writes:

>In a past life, I did programming for a company that did a lot of 
>interactive video development using the IBM InfoWindow.  Since then,
>I've sort of lost track of multimedia in general, and IBM's role in
>particular.

>I'm curious as to whether or not anything interesting has happened
>with the InfoWindow.  Has it gone through any major changes?  

IBM has come out with a board for MCA machines (Models 50 and up) which
lets you overlay video on a regular VGA monitor like the 8513. 

The board itself is really good, but the software that comes with it is
InfoWindow compatible.  For some reason, they kept the same scheme of
communicating with it, involving a complex relation of commands and
responses, as the InfoWindow.  The basic operation of sending a command
still involves building a large command string, full of oddities such
as long signed integers, and words with the high byte sometimes preceeding
the low byte, and other times following it, which are not convenient from
most high level languages.

You can run old InfoWindow applications on it, and you can create your
own new ones which use more commands and do more and better things, but
your stuck with an InfoWindow type interface to the new board, at
least for now.  The hardware itself is really good, and I've seen some
beautiful applications run on it, but the software to control it
is, at best, cumbersome.

Kris Bruland.
-- 
Kriston M. Bruland          |    . .         . .      . . .      .       . .
n8541751@unicorn.cc.wwu.edu |    .   .     . .        .        . .       .   .
8541751@nessie.cc.wwu.edu   |    .             .         .     .   .     .

Sorry, I forgot to mention the name of the IBM InfoWindow compatible board
in my first posting: it is the M-Motion board.

Kris Bruland.
-- 
Kriston M. Bruland          |    . .         . .      . . .      .       . .
n8541751@unicorn.cc.wwu.edu |    .   .     . .        .        . .       .   .
8541751@nessie.cc.wwu.edu   |    .             .         .     .   .     .

>>>>> On 18 Jan 91 01:27:23 GMT, jim@newmedia.UUCP (Jim Beveridge) said:

Jim> The successor to InfoWindow was a board called M/Motion.  It came out
Jim> several months after we (New Media Graphics) released our video overlay
Jim> card for PCs.  M/Motion is for MicroChannel, and costs around $2200.

Jim> We just upped the ante again with a $695 board for ISA bus machines that
Jim> includes video in a window AND audio, all onboard.  This new board has
Jim> 95% of the functionality of our VideoWindows board and IBM's M/Motion.
Jim> Basically only the special effects (wipes, dissolves, etc) were left out.

Jim> This board is designed on the PC Video chip that we designed with Chips
Jim> and Technologies.

Forgive me, but, coming from the Amiga world, I not real familiar with this
board or multimedia in the IBM arena, but my brother's been asking some
questions, so I thought I'd try to brush up.  Can you give me a rundown on the
types of applications where this board would be used and what capabilities it
would bring to those applications?
--
====================================================================
David Masterson					Consilium, Inc.
(415) 691-6311					640 Clyde Ct.
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"If someone thinks they know what I said, then I didn't say it!"

In article <CIMSHOP!DAVIDM.91Jan21153746@uunet.UU.NET>, cimshop!davidm@uunet.UU.NET (David S. Masterson) writes:
> >>>>> On 18 Jan 91 01:27:23 GMT, jim@newmedia.UUCP (Jim Beveridge) said:
> 
> Forgive me, but, coming from the Amiga world, I not real familiar with this
> board or multimedia in the IBM arena, but my brother's been asking some
> questions, so I thought I'd try to brush up.  Can you give me a rundown on the
> types of applications where this board would be used and what capabilities it
> would bring to those applications?

I'll start out with a quote.  
The Wall Street Journal had an article on multimedia on
Wed Nov 28, 1990 (pg B4, Col 1).  They say, "Multimedia technologies
are exciting because they promise to combine the best features
of computing, television and audio.  Students of, say, U.S. history
could learn about the Vietnam War by juxtaposing the text from an
electronic book with film clips stored on a compact disc.  Music
buffs could listen to, say, the solos of jazz great Louis Armstrong
while viewing transcriptions of his performances at the same time."

Our board does the video and audio part of this.  You could have 
a laserdisk full of images of Egyptian Art (Full TV color, 
not 256 color 8 bit images), combine that with a database of 
information about each picture, and add the capability of making
annotations.

Consider a new user of Some Spreadsheet (as in, "Gosh, that's
Some Spreadsheet!" :-) )  Most new users a very intimidated
by computers.  A person who appeared on the screen who talked
to you would be just like a TV, which everyone is familiar with.

A quick run-down:
	Computer based training
	Video teleconferencing (image if your computer _was_ the phone)
	Home video editing systems
	Military applications :-(

In other words, we are rapidly approaching a point where there
will be no difference between your computer, your stereo and
your TV.  Most of the new TV standards up for review to replace
NTSC are all digital, and this places them directly in the domain
of the computer.  Now on to virtual reality...

		Jim