From: laird@think.com (Laird Popkin)
Newsgroups: rec.games.video
Subject: Re: Sega CD
Date: 16 Oct 1992 22:28:55 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: django.think.com

In article <1992Oct16.172359.20034@clark.edu> gsnow@clark.edu (Gary Snow) writes:
>In article <1bmo5qINNhi4@early-bird.think.com> laird@think.com (Laird Popkin) writes:

[deleted]

>>        ...  But if Phillips can get CD-I units with JPEG chips selling
>>for $500 or so, with hundreds of movies released on CD-I CD-ROM for a low
>>price (I would guess at $10 each), with wide distribution, it could do
>>quite well as a digital movie player that happens to run some games and
>>educational titles.
>
>I don't think you'll see $10 for a disk. There are other things like licensing
>and royalties that you have to pay to film companies, its not just the cost
>of the disc itself.

Would those be higher, in general, than for music?  You can get music CD's
for $10-15, and often for less (there are lines of classical CD's that list
for $3.99, for example), so I'd expect the same range for video CD-ROMs.

I would predict (theorizing!) that there will be a line of cheap "classic"
movies which have fallen out of copyright, probably with many colorized but
with the option of turning the color off (taking advantage of the
intelligence in the CD-I unit), perhaps for $7-10, a line of more
expensive "latest hits", perhaps for $15-20, and a line of "special
editions" with detailed liner notes online, critiques of the movie,
articles about the actors and director, and so on, for perhaps $25-30.

In any case, I believe that CD-I movie CD's should be less expensive than
videotape, once the volumes ramp up, because CD's are cheaper to
manufacture, ship, store, support, and sell than videotapes.  They're
smaller and lighter, and don't break.

The thing that would keep Kaleida from being the perfect format for this is
that Kaleida doesn't require JPEG chips.  But there could be dedicated
Kaleida players with JPEG chips in them, just like CD-I players, and there
are already JPEG cards for the Mac and PC, but most Kaleida machines, which
will presumably be the installed base of PC's and Mac's, won't have such
goodies, and thus won't be able to play full-screen full-motion JPEG video
decently.  Of course, if Apple's software compression keeps getting better,
perhaps you won't *need* JPEG hardware in order to play movies... but if
CD-I movies become popular, I bet Kaleida will be able to play them <grin>.

To get this back on topic, at least a bit, I don't forsee any of the CD-ROM
formats tied to specific hardware becoming the "industry standard", since
there are too many people with too many different kinds of hardware.
Kaleida is multi-platform, so it has a good shot at becoming the "industry
standard" for distributing CD-ROM multimedia material, but I also believe
that same platform independence will mean that it won't be good at "arcade
games" which need to squeeze every ounce of performance from the hardware.

In the nicest future that I forsee, there will be a variety of CD-ROM based
videogame systems competing (e.g. Sega, Nintendo, Atari (?), Turbo
Technologies, etc.) and they, as well as home computers with CD-ROM drives,
will also have the capability of running Kaleida disks for more "serious"
software.

>Gary

- Laird

To get this back on top
-- 
- Laird Popkin, Thinking Machines

Connection Machine: Massively parallel supercomputer.  Also a cool black
cube with more blinking lights than you can shake a stick at.