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Watch This Space on Your CD

Steve Homer
***On their TV screens, users will be able to enter the Smithsonian museum and wander from room to room or take a guided tour.
ANIMBIX-FOOTED co muter wnp-ny Is ■bout to go to war with the (pants of the consumer electronica industry. The battlefield la the high afreet, and the weapon la a new concept in home education and entertainment — the interactive compact diac player
The first contender comes from the American computer company Commodore. Its CDTV burst upon an unsuspecting Industry at the Chicago Electronics Show In June.
The project was launched tn February when the company set up what Is known In the US as a 'skunk works' team. Reporting directly to the president of Commodore, and working in great secrecy, the team of 26 came up with a product that brings TV graphics. text, animation and expanded audio capabilities to the CD player
In unheard-of speed. CDTV will be In the shops this November priced £699 It will be a fully functionial conventional CD player but. linked to the television, will offer a wide range of educational and entertainment opportunities The key word In all this will be interaction.
Data stored on CD-type discs will be translated by the system into pictures, text and sound The user will be able to control the system with an infra red remote control device.
similar to current TV controllers. and will select how the Information on the disc is Interpreted. For example, several foreign language courses are under development and the beauty of the system is that it will allow users to control the course to satisfy their own needs Users will not be constrained by the linear nature of video or cassette-based systems.
Commodore claims that 50 of the 94 titles unde- development will be published by December. These include the World Vista Atlas, where the user can zoom in on any continent. region or country and pull down socio-economic statistics. Images or soundtracks of music, people talking and other relevant Information
Another title, a Timetable of Science and Innovation, an exploration of the history of science and technology, will have approximately 6.000 individual references and thousands of graphic and multimedia effects. In a lighter vein. Scary Poems for Rotten Kids will no doubt attract many a harassed parent. This title claims "classic stories became Interactive learning programmes."
Roughly 30 per cent of the titles are educational. 10 per cent reference. 10 per cent for primary school children. 15 per cent simulation (such as skiing). 10 per cent adventure games. 10 per cent arcade games. 4 per cent quiz-type games. 5 per cent leisure, and 2 per cent "for women."
So far. so good. But buyers of CDTV should beware, because coming up on the rails Is CD-I. a similar but more advanced and totally incompatible system. Discs for one machine won't operate on the other, resulting in confusion and extra costs for both manufacturers and the public. Until, that Is. market forces establish one system as the "victor."
Soon after Philips created the compact disc In the early Eighties, its computer scientists realised that here was a magnificent way of storing data for personal computers. The Compact disc Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) can store around 550 megabytes, or
roughly 550 million characters — that is the entire text of the Encyclopaedia Britannica — twice over on one small five-inch compact disc.
Philips and Sony then decided to offer more sophisticated facilities in a domestic setting. So CD-! (Compact disc-Interactive) was born. Standards for text, graphics, high quality stills and complex video effects were laid down an animation was added. Initially. full motion video (FMV — moving video images of almost TV qualify ) was not considered possible at a consumer price level. But full screen FMV is now a reality in development model CD-I players.
This, from a product to sell for less than $1,000 (£530). is no mean feat. Sophisticated compression techniques, using advanced microprocessor chips, have now solved the problems of FMV. but wrangling at international standards committees continues, and final confirmation is needed
before production models can be made.
CD-I is now backed not only by Philips and Sony but also Matsushita, the three largest consumer electronics manufacturers in the world. But CD-I will not be in the shops until late 1991 in the US and early 1992 tn the UK.
Philips and Sony have lined up an impressive range of titles which they claim will be available at launch. With a CD-I disc capable of storing 72 minutes of full motion video, more than 7,000 high-quality still pictures, two hours of hi-fi standard audio or 16 hours of vice quality audio, obvious examples of its use will be encyclopaedias. dictionaries, language courses and the like.
Already there are CD-ROM products that allow music lovers to enjoy their favourite orchestral passages and read the score at the same time. But with CD-I they could also study the string section in isolation, mix in historical instruments
or play selected pieces of the score. There is also an adult golf game complete with comments on your golf from Arnold Palmer, applause from the crowd, random effects of wind and a realistic simulation of the ball landing In the lake. This is a vastly different product to the golf computer games currently available.
The most talked about of the existing discs, however, is an early version of The Treasures of the Smithsonian. The famous American museum has, for many years, produced a range of six coffee-table books showing many objects it cannot always display. Six discs, each costing $50. the same as the books, offer even more information. On their TV screen, users enter the museum and wander from room to room, do some desk research or take a guided tour.
Many companies are exploring CD-I for internal purposes. Renault, for instance, has produced service training material
on CD-I. With new models coming out all the time, updating manuals and training technicians is a constant headache
Added to that is the language problem. CD-I's eight audio track capability could make training staff a lot easier. Further, interactive training modules mean that mechanics can experiment with electrical wiring on a CD-I device rather than on your car.
A CD-I system is already operating at the R&A Golf Museum at St Andrew's. Here, since the beginning of July, the rules of the game and an interactive histoiy of golf have been offered to visitors.
The CD-I consortium will soon be launching an underground offensive against CDTV. Through Polygram and other record companies. "CD-I Ready" music CDs will be sold. These discs will play normally on ordinary CD players, but spare capacity will be used to store pictures, discographies and words of songs that will only became usable when a CD-I player is bought
So what about the long term? There is no doubt that, compared to the sophistication of CD-I. CDTV is a quick fix. The player is esseniially a
Commodore Amiga home computer with a CD-ROM drive, repackaged as a massmarket consumer product.
But the components are well-established, cheap and reliable, the technology is proven, there are more than two million Amigas already sold world-wide (half a million in the UK) and a huge base of titles with many developers producing software for them. But most important. Commodore will have a clear field for at least 12 months.
The drawbacks of CDTV are Inferior graphics handling, inferior pictures, inferior audio management and a lack of full motion video. But That may soon change. Commodore sits on the same standards committees as Philips et al and Commodore says it is hoping to offer FMV on CDTV soon after the 'final compression methods have been agreed. (This does, however, mean that titles that use FMV will not play on early CDTV players).
What we have Is two very similar, very exciting products, using incompatible operating systems, battling for one mar ket. Available titles will be all-important. Both camps make expansive claims, but few finalised products are available and pricing remains hazy. Disc titles are initially likely to cost around the £10-£30 mark.
Once again, the marketplace will have to decide. Shopper-, must remember caveat ' *ct the buYcr
bewar< oc been warned