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- Xref: sparky comp.sys.amiga.multimedia:1594 comp.sys.amiga.advocacy:31254
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.multimedia,comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
- Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!ieunet!dec4ie.ieunet.ie!jkh
- From: jkh@whisker.lotus.ie (Jordan K. Hubbard)
- Subject: Why I bought a CD-I yesterday and what Commodore needs to do about it.
- Message-ID: <JKH.92Dec14032800@whisker.lotus.ie>
- Sender: usenet@ieunet.ie (USENET News System)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: whisker.lotus.ie
- Organization: Lotus Development Ireland
- Distribution: comp
- Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 03:23:34 GMT
- Lines: 122
-
- No, no, this isn't another Marc Barrett flame about Commodore
- (mis)Management, this is from a genuine Amiga fan who owns a CDTV and
- a 2500 but is nonetheless getting more than a little worried about the
- current state of affairs.
-
- Yesterday, as I was browsing through the local HiFi store in downtown
- Dublin, I noticed a new addition sitting prominently in the middle of
- the show area. It was a new Phillips CD-I system, attached to one of
- the nicer Phillips 21" stereo T.Vs, and surrounded by what looked like
- a Philips-supplied carousel of CD-I titles. All very attractive and
- professionally presented, and I wandered over to it for closer
- inspection. A salesman materialized in the usual 4.7 nanoseconds
- after I displayed an interest and 2 minutes later I was staring at
- "Treasures of the Smithsonian", a CD-I title featuring audio visual
- "tours" through the Smithsonian Institution. Now before I go into my
- impressions that followed, let me back up a minute and discuss why I
- bought a CDTV and (briefly) what my experiences with it have been.
-
- I purchased a CDTV about a year or so ago, after seeing it in a store
- and playing with the "welcome disk". Believe it or not, I was quite
- impressed with the welcome disk in and of itself, just given the way
- it made learning about the unit so much easier. Based on the strength
- of the welcome disk, and the fact that there really wasn't much else
- available, I walked out with the unit 20 minutes later (well, er, I
- did pay for it first).
-
- A year and a half later, as I've kept one constant eye on the CDTV
- "title" scene, I've accumulated a growing collection of good and
- not-so-good titles. "World Vista", "Advanced Military Systems", "The
- Guiness Disk of Records", Xiphus's "Time Table of History" series and,
- of course, the usual included titles like "The Hutchinson
- Encyclopedia" and "Snoopy, the case of the missing blanket", to name
- just some. A few of the titles, like "Snoopy" and "Hutchinson" are
- downright awful, and never leave their cases. Others, like "World
- Vista" and "Advanced Military Systems" are used once every other month
- or so, which is quite often for the CDTV (it generally does little
- more than play audio CD's). Throughout, I've either been outright
- disappointed with the quality of the titles, or left with the nagging
- feeling that the title I just saw was good, but somehow could have
- been just *that* much better in some way. Usually the information
- content is good but the interface is simply awful, or it's the other
- way around.
-
- Put more simply, I've yet to see a CDTV title that *really* shines in
- the human engineering dept.
-
- It was in this skeptical state of mind that I watched "Smithsonian"
- load on the CD-I. And was floored. From top to bottom, the entire
- title simply oozed production values. It wasn't just a matter of
- having more colors (though the larger color pallette was used to
- magnificent effect), it was a matter of leaving almost no area
- "unpolished" in any way. Everything from the initial load screen to
- the method of selecting which "building" you wanted to enter was
- really really well done.
-
- Certainly, there were flaws - it wasn't immediately obvious how to
- "browse" around the institute as what controls there were tried too
- hard to use standard "cassette player" icons. Often, you found
- yourself wondering "Does that arrow mean 'forward' or does it mean
- 'continue' or does it mean (click) 'MENU' (!) Menu?!? Eh??".
-
- Nonetheless, I had to work rather hard to find flaws, rather than
- having them leap out at me from the very start, as has sadly been the
- case with most CDTV titles.
-
- Not one to stop there, I loaded Time Life's "photography" CD-I title
- and was floored twice. Using a very slick presentation, the user is
- walked through basic photographic technique and given an opportunity
- to use an imaginary camera to take a "picture" of a scene with
- different f-stop settings and targets for the light meter. You're
- then shown the visual results of your snap, with helpful comments made
- if you've overexposed it or made some other error. I'm not really all
- that interested in photography, yet I found myself quite entranced by
- the section on light, where they show you a lake scene at different
- times of the day and explain how best to use the colors of sunset,
- early dawn, etc. It's really very difficult to convey how well
- put-together everything was, you really have to see it for yourself.
-
- Needless to say, I left the store having placed an order and it
- arrives the day after tomorrow with accompanying "Treasures of the
- Smithsonian" CD.
-
- Now I did promise that this wasn't a unilateral flame against
- Commodore, and it's not. First off, I more than intend to hang onto
- my CDTV in hopes that Commodore will eventually realize what is going
- on and take a more active hand in the developer market.
-
- You see, it's my impression that Commodore has always been a very
- "hands off" company when it comes to 3rd parties, content to let
- certain firms take areas of the peripheral and software market (like
- GVP or Electronic Arts) and do what needs to be done. Unfortunately,
- this strategy DOES NOT WORK with the CDTV market, which drastically
- needs both a serious marketing strategy and a program of rigorous
- quality control. Titles like "snoopy" and "hutchinsons" are simply
- pathetic and are scarcely what you want to be bundling with your
- product in order to make a good impression. I would even go so far as
- to say that many of the poor titles have actively *HURT* CDTV sales as
- many potential "walk-in" customers were quickly turned off by what
- they saw and went off to buy something else for christmas.
-
- Lack of sales causes, in turn, more developers to look to other new
- markets and the situation further deteriorates.
-
- Commodore! WAKE UP! Your machine is capable of a lot more than any
- of the titles I've seen currently do with it. I'm not even
- necessarily saying "all pictures in HAM, all animations FMV" - I'm
- simply saying "better artwork", "better overall interface", "BETTER
- OVERALL PRODUCTION VALUES!" Sorry to shout, it's just that I
- sometimes get a little worked up over these things. I know being
- first-to-market was important to you, and the various Amiga magazines
- had a lot of fun slagging Philips off for their "vapor hardware", but
- I'm afraid that they're very much here now and they put their extra
- time to good use. It's time for you to start competing on their turf.
-
- I really didn't intend or imagine myself becoming a CD-I customer, I
- just couldn't resist what they've managed to do. Sigh...
-
- Jordan
-
- --
- Jordan Hubbard Lotus Development Ireland jkh@whisker.lotus.ie
- I DO NOT SPEAK FOR LOTUS - IT HAS PLENTY OF LAWYERS TO DO THAT FOR IT ALREADY
-